Changing strategy & reacting to the dip in the market?

B0bbyEwing

I understand the whole timing the market, lack of a crystal ball thing & as such I just pay in my monthly payments & pay little to no attention to what's going on in the world.
When Covid landed, I did consider throwing extra cash in to my SIPP but I took time to decide whether I was going to or not & by that time I just decided to not bother. 

Having a look at our investments & various funds seem to have a 10% drop or so in my portfolio within the past month. Within the past 2 months I've lost maybe 20% in total.

Which makes me consider either upping my monthly contributions or throwing in a lump sum - but realise that this also comes under timing the market too. 

I usually have no idea what causes dips or spikes but can guess that the whole Trump thing at the moment is one cause. As said, I pay little attention to the news... beyond sport.

Just putting this out there as a wondering really. What do those of you reading this do? Keep your monthly/annual contributions the exact same & pay no mind to the noise? Put in extra during times like these? 

I appreciate everyone has their own circumstances. A 65yr old will be looking at a different timeframe to a 20yr old and on that note I have approx 25yrs left of work before I look at retiring. Hopefully less not more. 

InvesterJones

Same topic has come up a few times in the last month, unsurprisingly

For me, continue as normal. No way to know if this is the bottom and it'll shoot back up, or if it's got a long way to fall yet. Changing my contribution would only happen if I had a change of heart to how much I wanted to invest, which should be a decision made without looking at recent performance. If anything, the turmoil would psychologically have me holding a bit more cash rather than put it into investments, but that's why a plan to stick to is important.

The only change I have made is rebalancing since my gold was performing so well it went above my target allocation.

Mark_d

For my pension I keep my contributions the same.  It's simpler to manage and works for my tax efficiency.

In terms if other investments, I invest lump sums as and when I think share prices are good.  But you need to understand why share prices are low in order to take a view on the future prospects.

The companies I've invested in this April are UK companies with little dependency on the US.  Price is low because of the general market trend rather than something specifically impacting that company/sector.

dharm999

I’m about to start drawing down from my SIPP, so made the decision a little while ago to switch into income units and any income I get now goes in to a money market fund, but stays within my SIPP.  As and when I access the SIPP I’ll sell down the money market fund but leave the other investments as is.  I’m in a mix of equities (global, emerging market, Europe, uk), bonds, commercial property and gold.  The last two are now around 20% of my SIPP, a bit higher than I want, but happy to ride things out.  The gold price increase has definitely helped to mitigate the drops elsewhere, currently I’m around 7% down from peak value, but it would have been closer to 10% if it hadn’t been for the gold holding.

kempiejon

InvesterJones said:

The only change I have made is rebalancing since my gold was performing so well it went above my target allocation.

I have seen the gold appreciation but rather than rebalancing my gold downward I am adding more. However I have been adding for about 4 years. I am also adding to my global ETF and some UK quoted stocks. I did a bit of tidying and portfolio management with the new tax year which included selling a US etf and buying some fixed interest.

B0bbyEwing said:
Just putting this out there as a wondering really. What do those of you reading this do? Keep your monthly/annual contributions the exact same & pay no mind to the noise? Put in extra during times like these? 

I generally buy every month, new money floods in at the beginning of the tax year as I moved sell unsheltered stocks and add accumulated cash in the a new SIPP and ISA so this was a busy time for buys and some sells, I don't necessarily put in extra but perhaps think about which parts of the portfolio I direct funds at. I do not have the certainty that USA will come zooming out of the blocks in a few months and this is an excepptionally good time to pile in. IN fact I know that I cannot know

Hoenir

Continue to drip feed money.  However be highly focussed on what you are investing in. Different segments of the investment universe are going to perform in very different ways in the years ahead. Trying to catch falling knives often results in severe long term injury to ones foot.