Tech stock share price falls

Cobbler_tone

Moonwolf said:

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

I was in a BT sharesave many years ago where I paid 61p a share for just under 25,000 shares (£250 a month over 5 years) worth £3.30 a share at the time.  I still have 3,000 BT shares in my stocks and shares ISA along with some other bits and pieces, although I will move it all to cash in the next few months.

Nice. I'm assuming the 25,000 were different to the current BT shares which would be worth £3.5m today and around £22m in 2000.
I love seeing the stories where if people had kept shares they would be multi millionaires. The way I look at it is that it doesn't matter if you made a healthy profit or else we'd all be George Soros.

AlanP_2

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

Tell that to the employees of Digital Equipment Company (DEC) back in the 90s. Second largest IT company in the world behind IBM with over 100k employees many of whom had significant holdings in DEC shares.

Worth peanuts when they went bust and added to the loss of income and the fact that those who had the most in company shares were typically the oldest and the ones who struggled to get new employment during a tech downturn and you had a perfect storm.

I advise the two of my children who get access to company share schemes to sell ASAP and avoid having their income and their investments in one basket. Sure you may miss out if your employer is the next MicroSoft but how often does that happen.

MK62

Albermarle said:

400ixl said:

Unless you are heavily invested in tech it has been a 1-2% drop for a well spread portfolio, hardly a big drop in the bigger context of a pension fund.

Also the no need for advanced chips is not correct. The company stock piled 10s of thousands of high end Nvidea chips before they got banned for sale in China and complimented that with the midrange Nvidea gpu's they are still allowed to buy.

It is a great sign you can do good things with less but it's not what the pressure have sensationalised it to be.

Also apparently if you ask it about Tiannamen square, it refuses to answer.

The tech guy interviewed on the BBC,from the Economist, said the answers it gives are often slanted to China's (and hence the ruling party's) view of the world......

Cobbler_tone

AlanP_2 said:

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

Tell that to the employees of Digital Equipment Company (DEC) back in the 90s. Second largest IT company in the world behind IBM with over 100k employees many of whom had significant holdings in DEC shares.

Worth peanuts when they went bust and added to the loss of income and the fact that those who had the most in company shares were typically the oldest and the ones who struggled to get new employment during a tech downturn and you had a perfect storm.

I advise the two of my children who get access to company share schemes to sell ASAP and avoid having their income and their investments in one basket. Sure you may miss out if your employer is the next MicroSoft but how often does that happen.

That's the exception rather than the norm. The maximum you can invest via company schemes is £1800 per year via salary sacrifice (or 10% of salary whichever is lower), so unlikely to make a huge difference to most people on a decent wage. It is a low risk bet to make tens of thousands of pounds in most established companies after a few years service. Shares clearly go up and down but a overnight crash to zilch (or certainly less than what you paid in, considering the tax break and BOGOF) must be rare. For those 100k employees, how many tens of millions must be quids in. It is a bit like not flying because there are plane crashes. Our shares have grown 5%-10% every year for the past 30+, along with the odd meaty dividend as we have changed company.

AlanP_2

Must admit I've no idea what the contribution limits are but I know a few older guys who had £150K plus in DEC shares at their peak back around 1990. Rules around such schemes were different as well then. We could sell on the day they vested (end of year) and take the cash without even owning the shares effectively. That's what I did as with my wife at home looking after kids and one salary I needed the money then not years later.

They didn't crash overnight, just a general drift downwards as sales and profits fell, redundancies kicked in and eventually the last dregs were sold on.

Any company that has achieved 5-10% share price growth EVERY YEAR for the last 30 years is the exception I would think so congrats on that,


A classic example of where our personal experience influences our future viewpoint. For you, good outcome go for it. For me bad outcome avoid like the plague.

MeteredOut

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

When I hear these stories, I always share a caution about the people i knew who had spent 10+ years at RBS putting money into their employee share purchases scheme, many ready to use it for an early retirement.

95% of their investment was wiped out in 2008, and its only recovered a fraction of that since.

Cobbler_tone

AlanP_2 said:

Must admit I've no idea what the contribution limit s are but I know a few older guys who had £250K plus in theoretical, value of DEC shares at their peak.

They didn't crash overnight, just a general drift downwards as sales and profits fell, redundancies kicked in and eventually the last dregs were sold on.

Any company that has achieved 5-10% share price growth EVERY YEAR for the last 30 years is the exception I would think so congrats on that,

It's the rules:

https://www.gov.uk/tax-employee-share-schemes/share-incentive-plans-sips#:~:text=You can buy shares out,tax year, whichever is lower.

There are thousands of companies who will show sustained growth over time, OK maybe the odd dip (which never get close to meaning you aren't making good money)...and never underestimate the power of the reinvested dividend, which grow significantly as the share number does.

MeteredOut

Cobbler_tone said:

Moonwolf said:

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

I was in a BT sharesave many years ago where I paid 61p a share for just under 25,000 shares (£250 a month over 5 years) worth £3.30 a share at the time.  I still have 3,000 BT shares in my stocks and shares ISA along with some other bits and pieces, although I will move it all to cash in the next few months.

Nice. I'm assuming the 25,000 were different to the current BT shares which would be worth £3.5m today and around £22m in 2000.
I love seeing the stories where if people had kept shares they would be multi millionaires. The way I look at it is that it doesn't matter if you made a healthy profit or else we'd all be George Soros.

Math aint mathing   25000 * £1.44 (current price) = 36K.

Cobbler_tone

MeteredOut said:

Cobbler_tone said:

Moonwolf said:

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

I was in a BT sharesave many years ago where I paid 61p a share for just under 25,000 shares (£250 a month over 5 years) worth £3.30 a share at the time.  I still have 3,000 BT shares in my stocks and shares ISA along with some other bits and pieces, although I will move it all to cash in the next few months.

Nice. I'm assuming the 25,000 were different to the current BT shares which would be worth £3.5m today and around £22m in 2000.
I love seeing the stories where if people had kept shares they would be multi millionaires. The way I look at it is that it doesn't matter if you made a healthy profit or else we'd all be George Soros.

Math aint mathing   25000 * £1.44 (current price) = 36K.

  my bad. I am used to looking at shares in $ and not pennies. 

MeteredOut

Cobbler_tone said:

MeteredOut said:

Cobbler_tone said:

Moonwolf said:

Cobbler_tone said:

The only way I ‘play’ the market is with my company shares. £90 net a month for £300 worth of shares. Started buying at £30 and now £70, it’s a no brainer, plus the dividends add up. Tax free after 3-5 years.
Some people I work with long service are on £30k a year and have £150k worth of shares if they haven’t touched them. I don’t stress about the prices as whenever you sell them you are quids in, unless the bottom totally fall out of them which is unlikely. Company schemes are great benefits.
No CGT either if sold whilst with or when leaving the company.

I was in a BT sharesave many years ago where I paid 61p a share for just under 25,000 shares (£250 a month over 5 years) worth £3.30 a share at the time.  I still have 3,000 BT shares in my stocks and shares ISA along with some other bits and pieces, although I will move it all to cash in the next few months.

Nice. I'm assuming the 25,000 were different to the current BT shares which would be worth £3.5m today and around £22m in 2000.
I love seeing the stories where if people had kept shares they would be multi millionaires. The way I look at it is that it doesn't matter if you made a healthy profit or else we'd all be George Soros.

Math aint mathing   25000 * £1.44 (current price) = 36K.

  my bad. I am used to looking at shares in $ and not pennies. 

Yes, GBX has confused many a spreadsheet of mine.