Cash in Junior stocks & shares ISA? - Coronavirus crash

cmcdng

I have a Junior stocks and shares ISA for my 5 year old son, which I pay into monthly. The total value has dropped around 10% since the market plunge last week. I have read lots of advice to say that now is a good time to buy into a stock & shares ISA due to low share prices, so I will probably continue to make the monthly payments, but I'm not sure what to do about the existing capital. Should I withdraw it before the market inevitably dips even further, or ride it out on the basis that it's a very long term investment, and the market will (hopefully) recover at some point?

Thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks. 

eskbanker

The guidance on here is overwhelmingly the latter, i.e. accept that investing is for the long term (13 years in your case) and hold existing investments rather than selling at a loss.  If you believed that markets wouldn't recover at some point then it wouldn't make sense to invest at all in the first place, as negative periods like this should be expected at various times....

masonic

It isn't inevitable markets will fall further, that's the problem. A recovery in the future is far more certain than further drops. Would you want to be out of the market when that happens?

Alexland

As valuations became stretched I was quite pessimistic about future medium term returns near the peak so I decided it was better to lock in profits on my children's S&S JISAs and take the 3%+ rates available on Cash JISAs.

Now the stock market is looking better value and future returns are again likely to exceed such advantageous cash rates I am transferring back to S&S JISAs.

Hopefully the market fear and uncertainty will last long enough for the transfers and trades to complete.