My S&S diary - investing from February 2026

masonic

It can be very useful to point you to sources of obscure information, which you can then use to fact-check it. Quite often I find the source it quotes actually contradicts it because it has mixed together concepts from different parts of the source, but that's less important if I find the information I need.

kempiejon

@LL_USS So when you felt the market mispriced MSFT, a faithful blue chip and at the same time thought the S&P overvalued so you collected some cheap MSFT. You saw a profit a few days later because MSFT went up and sold to bank that profit. The trigger to sell was a 10% gain rather than the realisation of value, or higher than anticipated financials or other tangible, just an upward movement of share price.

I think the S&P has been running high for a few years now, but hold though did reduce my exposure about 15% of profit ago. If you're still waiting to buy S&P what sort of signal are you waiting for?

LL_USS

@kempiejon yes for MSFT I only keep it in medium term waiting till I feel a bit more confident with the market trend) so when there was good profit I sold half. I did the same for a few holdings - selling half at high then buying half again at lower price points, though at the end I have completely sold many of them.

To get into a heavy cash position to wait when the market is irrationally high, with signs of bubbling, we tend to miss the very top of the market. We calculate what we feel more comfortable of, and can of course calculate wrong. I have pulled out perhaps too early, but this is what I can stomach better than just putting the money in and see the market corrects 20-23% etc.

I have no idea what are the signs to wait for - telling myself I'll go in after the indexes have a big drop (or perhaps two consecutive ones, but really I don't know. The correction from Trump's liberation day last April was only in one day).

AI answer I had a couple of days before was I could wait forever so just put down a date to target at - and I have thought of September, after summer holiday, before teaching starts, DCA twice a month.

aroominyork

MSFT I only keep it in medium term waiting till I feel a bit more confident with the market trend

The medium term for holding stocks is not less than three years - some would say five. You held MSFT for, I think, more like three months. But your whole 'learning' process has involved trying to compress market dynamics of years into months if not weeks. You can extrapolate that into years but it is not giving you an accurate picture.

LL_USS

@aroominyork thanks for correcting the term - yes it is short-term, even very short ;-)

LL_USS

1 july 2026

I still keep some money in crypto and most still well below ATH all time high when I bought. A bit unfortunate to keep buying in when they were down thinking I averaged them down but it was truly catching a falling knife then. Yet I still keep my conviction that they will come back. Today solana strategies did jump up close to 50% vs yesterday and to be honest it was scary. Micro strategies also jumped about 10% at best, others also improved and at times went back to green, but I am still under considerably for the main ib1t.

LL_USS

21 July 2026

Back from holiday with kids and back to work. I've just checked to see that the investment pot for my pension with USS, which I changed to Do it myself then moved all from high growth temporarily to cash, deposits and short term bonds on 9 July, changed from 87,112 to 87,513. Don't know how it works out. I am still worried about a sharp correction on investments.

My Lifetime ISAs still holds some temporary investments as well. Still in green in total with those investments and I am observing to gradually sell them to change to a longer-term hold with world index as main and some commodities and industries as satellites.

LL_USS

26 July 2026

One more look to see if I could try to move my USS pension investment pot to "bonds" rather than "liquidity fund". If the intention is to wait out choppy water to buy back again into equity then I suppose just stick to liquidity for now.

Energy ETF back to high - both tech and semis still lowered from their ATH. Different opinions online, either "the market is different from 2007, much lower oil price still (about half in real terms), unemployment rates and growth still okay" etc OR "it's more serious than that, the market cannot stay that high when all fundamentals are lower". I am staying conservative on both my DIY pension pot and Lifetime ISA.

LHW99

If you are accumulating, "choppy water" can be helpful for monthly investments - see pound cost averaging.

LL_USS

@LHW99 I still feel uneasy about the market so I'll do the pound cost averaging when I feel the highs are not too ridiculous.

Red all around yesterday's market - still don't know if it's down enough yet for me to attempt going back in gradually