Investing in current times

kenzie123

I opened an S&S ISA about 18 months ago and have invested in one thing since it started

in the last month it’s gone down, as I’m sure many people are experiencing.

im fairly new to this so not sure if i should take the advice of many social media posts and continue with monthly investments or wait for things to change - on another note is now a good time to purchase more?

understood no one can decide for me but would appreciate some advice or thoughts on the current downward spiral we’re seeing now.

Thanks

masonic

What "one thing" did you invest in? It's perhaps a small detail people might want to know when opining about whether you should buy more of it.

Did it also go down a year ago? By more than it has gone down now? What did you do then?

InvesterJones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6661710/investing-in-current-times

When you decided to start investing, what was your plan for any downturn?

Albermarle

‘Downward Spiral’ is a bit of an over dramatic description of what we have seen so far…

phlebas192

When investing, you are either buying a specific asset (eg shares in a single company) or a collective arrangement (index / fund / ETF / general investment trust etc).

With the former you are making a specific decision based on your views of the current market valuation compared to what you think it should be. If the current value is sufficiently less than your own view then buy. If not, then don't. The market situation only comes into the equation in so much as it impacts your view of what the true valuation should be.

When it comes to a collective arrangement then you are unlikely to be taking any specific view of the valuation. You accept that the current one takes into account all known factors, but choose to buy because you believe that it will typicaly be worth more in the future than it is now based on historical precedent. In this situation you should simply invest whenever you have sufficient spare cash to make transaction costs suitably negligible.

I'm guessing that you are in the latter scenario if you are making monthly investments. So continue to do so. There may be short term pain (or gain!) but pausing your investments is making an active decision about the future. Do you consider yourself capable of making such a choice?

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81941256#Comment_81941256

I don't know, I've seen it a few times now. Maybe we should embrace it, we could have:

"Downward spiral": 0-10%

"Correction": 10-20%

"Crash": 20+%

dunstonh

im fairly new to this so not sure if i should take the advice of many social media posts and continue with monthly investments or wait for things to change - on another note is now a good time to purchase more?

nothing going on at the moment that changes anything.

understood no one can decide for me but would appreciate some advice or thoughts on the current downward spiral we’re seeing now.

Downward spiral. it has been anything but a donward spiral. Voltile and a mild overall loss from peak but we are only back to around November 2025 in pricing.

If this mild loss period is worrying you then aint seen nothing yet.

chiang_mai

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81941256#Comment_81941256

I don't know what you see but I see the major indicies all falling between 7% and 9% over the past 30 days. There is a steady but consistent downwards trend with no indication that things will do other than remain the same or get worse. So no, I don't think that "downward spiral" is necessarily overly dramatic, it strikes me as a fair and accurate assessement. Others tell us that we haven't seen anything yet, which doesn't change that a downwards spiral is what it is, only the depth of the spiral changes over time.

InvesterJones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81941494#Comment_81941494

"I see the major indicies all falling between 7% and 9% over the past 30 days"

Yet after this, they're still up 17% or so over the last year. If a fall of 7-9% over 30 days has you changing plans then equities were the wrong investment - such a fall is not rare, it's expected.

chiang_mai

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81941602#Comment_81941602

Indeed, the Nikkei, for example, was up over 41% over the past twelve months and I had the good fortune to partipiate in that rise, hoorah! But today is a very different ball game and the Nikkei has fallen over 9% in one month alone, it has lost in one month, a quarter of its past years gain. So perhaps, rather than look at history that cannot be changed, it may be better to look at today markets and current events to see if there are any appropriate ways to further reduce or mitigate risk. Coincidently, I happened to be considering this exact point when I saw your post. The conclusion I arrived at is that it may now be appropriate to take profit (39%) on a UK fund that was overweight on Financial Services and to do the same and take profit (37%) from my EM holdings, thus reducing my equities exposure from 48% to around 40%. I have very little confidence that we can avoid body bags and inflation, the effects of the latter are already being felt where I live and are very real.

InvesterJones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81941649#Comment_81941649

Generally it's better to have a plan and stick to it, rather than reacting to events. Talk of 'taking profits' etc. isn't really part of long term investing. Of course, if your risk tolerance has changed then it's good to look at asset allocations accordingly, but better to do that as part of planning, rather than a reaction to something in the world.