cautious would-be investor

blokedownpub wrote: »

A question from a cautious would-be investor -

I have a reasonable lump of cash to invest (around 200k) and have had it sitting in an NS&I account for a good bit over a year awaiting the big correction, which stubbornly seems to not be happening

That correction already happened, within your stated timeframe, and you missed it, eg. between 3rd Oct-2018 and 26th Dec-2018, US markets fell by 20%, which as per usual generated much fearfulness and forecasts for much larger falls to come as people extrapolated the near term past into the immediate future...

As a cautious would-be-investor presumably without much/any prior investing experience, and acting solo, you'd have found it psychologically difficult to make your first investment of a large sum of "safe" cash into such a market environment, so it's not a huge surprise that you didn't.

Your mistake here has been to look for some "optimal" or at least much better moment at which to make your investment:
(i) it's impossible to know without hindsight when that optimal or much better moment is; and
(ii) as alluded to above, for a novice investor without much/any prior experience, it's likely that the better the moment becomes (eg. the lower that markets get priced) the harder you'll find it to invest a one-off large sum of cash: you'll become fearful (or expectant) of even lower prices to come, due to the pessimistic news "narrative" that develops to explain the market falls that have already occurred, making it ever harder for onlookers such as yourself to leave the "safety" of cash and expose yourself to what appears to be growing market risk and volatility.


The easiest way for novices to become accustomed to market volatility, how it makes them feel and how to deal with it, is to be feeding money in regularly, eg. monthly, over many years, slowly growing their portfolio from having zero initial exposure, to low exposure, then modest exposure, and eventually to significant exposure. This slow, steady process give people time to adjust to the idea that their investments can swing around in value by large amounts without them worrying it about too greatly, and without generating emotions in them sufficiently strong to cause them to make poor decisions ("sell low") that will negatively impact their long term returns.

This path isn't quite open to you, as you have a one-off large sum to invest, but it suggests a possible option for you of feeding your money into the market over a set period of time (perhaps six month, a year, you decide) to a predetermined schedule that you follow unflinchingly.

The goal of this wouldn't be to get you invested in a manner that gave you the statistical best shot at the highest return (all-in at once does that), but instead to get you invested in a way that is psychologically the easiest for you to follow and has the highest likelihood of you being able to stay the course without being unseated from your investment during the more vulnerable early phase where your volatility tolerance will be at its lowest.

Powysshrew wrote: »

I'm in a similar position, where having recently moved to a SIPP, I have almost all my money in cash.

I am ready to invest but am concerned if the market is due an adjustment downwards however I am not keen on leaving as cash!

People were posting the same concerns about imminent market crashes 12 months ago, but sitting in cash would have lost them a really good year of growth. Time in the market not timing the market and all that.

If you are really nervous, why not drip feed into equities?

blokedownpub wrote: »

seacaitch, really interesting about the psychological nature of all of this. Exactly how I'm feeling. I might go hybrid and invest an initial chunk then drip feed from there. At least feel like I'm making inroads. I'm hoping I won't be trigger happy to remove on a downturn.

That sound like a good plan. If you invest a decent chunk of your savings initially and the value falls soon after, don't feel too disappointed as that will be a good time to invest some further funds.