Unit trust in which country

kuratowski

The tops and bottoms of a market are never knowable at the time, only with hindsight.  Just because you think the market is high right now doesn't stop it from going even higher.  The same works for the lows.

lozzy1965

sevenhills said:

eskbanker said:

Sure, but the fundamental point remains that timing the market would be great if it could be done reliably and successfully, so it's much easier to spot the buying (and selling) opportunities retrospectively.  Difficult enough in your home market but if you believe that it's viable to research all other countries' markets in sufficient detail to spot these in real time, then good luck with that!

When buying a unit trust you can choose a European focus, Asia Pacific, Japan, USA or with or without UK.

So if one region has been having a bull market for 3/4 years, you might choose a different country/region?

You need to be a bit more precise than that.  At 3 years you don't know whether the bull market may continue for another year or not.  If you buy then, it might drop straight after, or it may drop after 4, or it may last 10 years.  You can't time the market with any predictability.
Then the market drops so you buy.  Is it a quick drop and recover like Brexit ended up being.  Or a quick drop and a continuing downward trend for years, like Brexit was predicted to be?

Thrugelmir

sevenhills said:

When buying shares or unit trusts, the timing is very important. If you bought shares on the FSTE in March 2020 your shares would be performing very well, if you bought in January 20020 quite the opposite.

You could apply that logic to all the main global indices for very obvious reasons. Looking back with hindsight now that the vaccines produced have been proved to be effective is valueless. The US financial crash started much earlier than in the UK. Didn't stop UK investors piling into RBS shares for a while longer. Blissfully unware of RBS's involvement and exposure to the US mortgage market though. Which ultimately cost it dearly. 

With regards as to where to invest. Do your own research. Plenty of free informative information out there. You'll always find someone with a bullish outlook and a convincing story to sell. Ultimately it's opinion that drives markets in the short term. 

Thrugelmir

Deleted_User said:

Thrugelmir said:

With regards as to where to invest. Do your own research. Plenty of free informative information out there. You'll always find someone with a bullish outlook and a convincing story to sell. Ultimately it's opinion that drives markets in the short term. 

IMHO, "DYOR" is in some respects really bad advice. There is no need to have an opinion about everything!

Hence why I said there's plenty of information in the public domain if you chose to invest your own money. (Rather than rely on a passively managed diversified fund). There's a universe of opportunity for the patient retail investor.  Rationalising an investment decision needs to form part of the process. You'll never stop learning. 

sevenhills

Thrugelmir said:

You'll never stop learning. 

Not learning very much on this thread, unfortunately.

bostonerimus

sevenhills said:

Thrugelmir said:

You'll never stop learning. 

Not learning very much on this thread, unfortunately.

I think the thread has been very informative. You've learned that market timing should not be an important factor to you over the long term and that there is no consensus or magic bullet when it comes to sectors and geography. From those two insights you should be able to develop a strategy.

sevenhills

bostonerimus said:

I think the thread has been very informative. You've learned that market timing should not be an important factor to you over the long term and that there is no consensus or magic bullet when it comes to sectors and geography. From those two insights you should be able to develop a strategy.

So if you were buying unit trusts, would you buy UK only,  global or a combination of countries and what would be your reasoning?

Thrugelmir

All of them in different forms. Reasoning being diversity.  Every major market has it's laggards and dinosaurs that are best avoided. Micro and smaller caps are generally under researched globally , also too illiquid for mainstream passive tracking funds and ETF's. 

sevenhills

Thrugelmir said:

All of them in different forms. Reasoning being diversity.  Every major market has it's laggards and dinosaurs that are best avoided. Micro and smaller caps are generally under researched globally , also too illiquid for mainstream passive tracking funds and ETF's. 

So you are looking at the individual stocks in a foreign country?

bostonerimus

sevenhills said:

bostonerimus said:

I think the thread has been very informative. You've learned that market timing should not be an important factor to you over the long term and that there is no consensus or magic bullet when it comes to sectors and geography. From those two insights you should be able to develop a strategy.

So if you were buying unit trusts, would you buy UK only,  global or a combination of countries and what would be your reasoning?

For equities I'd buy a cap weighted global equity index fund. My reasoning is that I can't know the future and don't know enough to invest in individual countries...or to put it another way I don't like to stick my finger in the air and fool myself that I'm being smart.