Like the February Correction ?

Alexland wrote: »

My view is if you are happy with the value you currently see then get on with investing some of it. You will never be able to time the bottom of the market with perfection. If it makes you feel better hold some of your cash back incase it gets worse but accepting that it might get better.

If it gets worse after you have run out of cash there's always the ability to move bonds into equities.

Alex

That's assuming one holds bonds.

25_Years_On wrote: »

This feels very like the stock market falls in the decade before 2008. A few days of falls and then a few days of rises and it's back to square one.

Thing is there hasn't been much volatility until February this year. Look at the last two years and then bang this year.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/data/36/36054e6065bfb26049f5b0e8f1278087.png

I was tempted to sell out when Provident Financial hit the mat in 2017, thinking it could signal the bursting of the consumer credit bubble. Before everyone clutches their pearls, I had a reasonably good but non-essential short-term use for the money (making an overpayment on my mortgage in order to remortgage without a guarantor - it isn't purely about the interest rate). So even if the market had carried on rising I wouldn't be too fussed. I also wouldn't have been too fussed if I decided to stay in and the market had crashed. In the end I decided to hang on.

That has probably cured me of any inclination to call the top of the market.

We are still several years short of the record for the longest-ever bull market (1987-2000). If this bull market does run for a few years more, today's "bloodbath" will be completely forgotten and will be invisible on historic price graphs.

DennisTenus wrote: »

Which UK/Global trackers if you don't mind me asking?

Maybe should have more correctly said UK/International but L&G UK100 and International index funds

DennisTenus wrote: »

Someone posted this in the comments on the Telegraph.... thoughts? do they make a good point?

If hoary old gold-bug ramping constitutes a good point.

If you sold all your investments whenever the markets were "spooked" (which is a lot of the time) and bought gold, you would almost certainly lose money. Over most long term periods, equities outperform shiny zero-yielding metal. All efforts to show the contrary involve industrial size cherry-pickers.

The point is that in every year since the 2008 crash gold has outperformed the FTSE substantially.

This is not just a lie but the kind of lie that insults the intelligence of the listener.

2008: FTSE -29%, Gold 46% (Gold win)
2009: FTSE 30%, Gold 10% (FTSE win)
2010: FTSE 15%, Gold 34% (Gold win)
2011: FTSE -3%, Gold 11% (Gold win)
2012: FTSE 12%, Gold 2% (FTSE win)
2013: FTSE 21%, Gold -30% (FTSE win)
2014: FTSE 1%, Gold 5% (Gold win)
2015: FTSE 1%, Gold -5% (FTSE win)
2016: FTSE 17%, Gold 30% (Gold win)
2017: FTSE 13%, Gold 4% (FTSE win)
2018 to date: FTSE -4%, Gold -7% (FTSE win, and so much for gold being so terrific when the markets are spooked)

Final result: dead heat in an irrelevant contest (as nobody invests in either equities or gold for discrete 1 year periods). Gold has certainly not outperformed in every year since 2008.

As a ten-year continuous investment, over the past ten years gold has outperformed the FTSE, but this is to be expected if you cherry-pick a period that involved a massive crash in the FTSE and a massive boost for gold. The chance of exactly the same happening over the next ten years is very low.

Whatever happens, right now gold is the commodity to invest in of you want to protect your assets. How long that will last remains to be seen

Terrific logic. Gold is the commodity to invest in for the long-term, but this might not last forever. So not for the long-term, then.

If you want to protect your assets for the short term, gold is manifestly unsuitable as it is a volatile commodity which can lose half its value or more in a short space of time. If you want to protect your assets for the short term, you want cash.