SJP Portfolio value drop

SimonGA

As many have said, that’s not a surprising fall for a higher risk portfolio in the current climate. It’s still dropping so may well go much further, but if you panic and sell now, you “crystallise” your ‘loss’ and will likely miss out on the recovery.

Higher risk portfolios nearly always perform better in the long run, but if you want to use a significant portion your investment in the next 5 years, then higher risk is possibly not the best decision.

I was with SJP but moved away because my own managed small portfolio did better and had a fraction of the fees, but there are risks in managing your own portfolio. There is a lot of advice on platforms like Interactive Investor, Hargreaves Landsdown, AJ Bell etc, but it’s very easy for us inexperienced people to be like a child’s football game where you move everything towards where the ball currently is.

I suspect SJP moved you to one of their new Polaris funds which were performing better than some of their old dogs, but in many cases the funds that have been performing well have been worst hit by the tariff saga (eg. in tech).  My (admittedly amateur) suggestion would be to leave things as they are while things are so volatile. Transferring from SJP to another platform involves coming out of the market and into cash, so there is a higher than normal chance that you will be out of the market when shares rally back up. That would probably be the worst scenario for you right now.