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Timing of investment sales

Pat38493
Posts: 3,132 Forumite

If I want to rebalance or sell part of my investments, as far as I understand, I have no control over the exact time of the sale?
For example with funds, the price changes once per day, but if I tell my provider (in my case II and Aegon) to sell, I don't know whether they will sell the same day, the next day, or even several days later?
Is it still the same if I invest in shares or ETFs? i.e. there is no way to "lock in" the selling price at the current level and say - I want to sell right now at 2.53pm on Thursday or whatever?
Apologies if that is a silly question as I suspect you are going to say that me selling part of my investment, in itself affects the price a tiny bit, so I can never sell at the exact price shown on the screen? Is that right or not?
For example with funds, the price changes once per day, but if I tell my provider (in my case II and Aegon) to sell, I don't know whether they will sell the same day, the next day, or even several days later?
Is it still the same if I invest in shares or ETFs? i.e. there is no way to "lock in" the selling price at the current level and say - I want to sell right now at 2.53pm on Thursday or whatever?
Apologies if that is a silly question as I suspect you are going to say that me selling part of my investment, in itself affects the price a tiny bit, so I can never sell at the exact price shown on the screen? Is that right or not?
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Comments
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Q1. Depends on the type of investment I think.
Q2. Possible, but they might have advice for you that settlement is x days after you place the order.
Q3. No. Q4. No, there is a way.
Q5. Not for exchange traded securities. Q6. No.1 -
JohnWinder said:Q1. Depends on the type of investment I think.
Q2. Possible, but they might have advice for you that settlement is x days after you place the order.
Q3. No. Q4. No, there is a way.
Q5. Not for exchange traded securities. Q6. No.0 -
Q1. It’s customary to be offered ‘market price’, so you’ll get whatever the buy price is when your order is executed having said ‘sell’. How slow is your internet connection? Some broker online interfaces might have a delay of microseconds to seconds from the market; and the higher you are up the food chain when it comes to trading the closer you get to market timing I would imagine. You and I won’t be far up. Or, rather than ‘market price’ you can set a limit which says ‘I will sell at any price above x’. Q2. Pretty much.1
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When I switch a fund with Fidelity it's sold at the next pricing point. if I put the order in by 11am it will be that day usually 12pm for most funds. The new fund will be bought the following day so you are out of the market for one day. They should have information on their website so you can see if it's the same as this.1
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With funds theres normally a cut off point , Aegon , it's 12 noon. To get a guide I normally look at the world markets . If they are up that should give an indication of price from the last quote. Eg markets up 1% in the morning then your selling fund should be up in theory . There's no guarantee..
what-price-will-I-get-when-I-switch-funds | Customer | Aegon
United States Stock Market Index - Quote - Chart - Historical Data - News (tradingeconomics.com)
With ETF's you can get an instant " live" quote in your dealing account and usually have 15 seconds to accept. It might be possible to set a limit order say sell at 230p or above but it mightn't get there.2 -
Janie2008 said:When I switch a fund with Fidelity it's sold at the next pricing point. if I put the order in by 11am it will be that day usually 12pm for most funds. The new fund will be bought the following day so you are out of the market for one day. They should have information on their website so you can see if it's the same as this.
Is this a reason in favour of a switch into ETFs or is it really not that important in the grand scheme of things?0 -
Q1. Yes. It’s also a reason against switching to ETF, since the ETF method facilitates/?encourages trading which is overall a losing proposition with buy/sell spreads, brokerage costs, taxation of gains, dangers of cognitive biases influencing investment decisions. Trading is good for the financial services industry, it’s not good overall for those trading since for each ‘winner’ there’ll be someone on the losing side of the trade.2
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Pat38493 said:If I want to rebalance or sell part of my investments, as far as I understand, I have no control over the exact time of the sale?
For example with funds, the price changes once per day, but if I tell my provider (in my case II and Aegon) to sell, I don't know whether they will sell the same day, the next day, or even several days later?
Is it still the same if I invest in shares or ETFs? i.e. there is no way to "lock in" the selling price at the current level and say - I want to sell right now at 2.53pm on Thursday or whatever?
Apologies if that is a silly question as I suspect you are going to say that me selling part of my investment, in itself affects the price a tiny bit, so I can never sell at the exact price shown on the screen? Is that right or not?
In the case of shares and ETFs the deal is executed immediately.
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With a fund, you should be able to time the sale or purchase pretty well by checking the platforms guidance of their cutoffs for those instructions. It doesn't always help though as you will not know the price at that point until after the transactions. You can try to estimate, but need to factor in todays Pacific and Europe prices, yesterdays US prices, any relevant out of hours pricing plus all the major currency changes for the day. Not really worth it.
ETFs if available take away this guesswork but this alone would not get me to use an ETF over a OEIC fund.0 -
Pat38493 said:Janie2008 said:When I switch a fund with Fidelity it's sold at the next pricing point. if I put the order in by 11am it will be that day usually 12pm for most funds. The new fund will be bought the following day so you are out of the market for one day. They should have information on their website so you can see if it's the same as this.
Is this a reason in favour of a switch into ETFs or is it really not that important in the grand scheme of things?0
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