Falling stock markets - Help!

Skyfire

Skyfire

Skyfire

Permabanned
Joined
28 Jul 2005
Posts
768
Hi,

These are my funds, and their losses in the past week

Invesco Perpetual Latin American Growth Inc £-3,057.44
JPM Natural Resources A £-2,645.384
JPM New Europe A Acc -1,294.65

Securities Total £ 36,578.30 -6,967.01

I am down 7K, should I pull out now or wait for a bounce back? ideas? :(
 
Keep a close eye on it, if it gets any worse then you may need to withdraw before too much damage is done. With a bit of luck its just a small dip and it should recover.
 
It'll drop even more if everyone starts pulling out, wait and see and it should stabilise again before too long.
 
it depends..... Are these in ISA wrappers? are there surrender/ admin fees etc? I moved all my funds to the far east as I thought this would happen... I've lost around £800 in the last week but it would have been a hell of a lot more if I hadn't pulled out at all.

TBH I wouldn't base your decision on the posts you get here (mine included)... but I would say (and I am going to) sit tight and buy up some FTSE 250/ 100 units if possible.... they will rebound! Maybe not within days/ weeks but they will!

Personally I wouldn't take anything out with a plan to put it back in as the volatility of stocks at the moment means you could end up down overall.

edit: Personally I would ditch the South American fund and move to the middle/ far east, as the North American markets are going to be on a downer for longer than any others I expect and I think they will influence South America more than they'll influence the middle/ far east.

This is all happenning because of the increase in commodity prices and the situation in the USA- i.e. the recent upturn in IR..... A lot of countries (esp. the UK) tend to mirror the US markets quite closely.
 
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Traditionally, the "general public" - ie not an investment professional - buy at the top and sell at the bottom. It is the lemming or sheep syndrome usually caused by media hype, and letting your emotions come into play.

The worry at the moment is with inflation in the states, and the sky high price of crude oil. Also, commodity prices have soared in the past year or 2 caused by hedge funds betting on these commodities continuing to rise.

There had to be a correction somewhere along the line, and I believe it is here. There may well be a bounce back upwards followed by further falls, but I reckon it will be a good time to "average down" by buying more, which your managed funds will do, and over time you will re-coup your paper losses.

If you sell now, like everybody did at the end of the dot com boom, you'll be kicking your self and probably spending the next 5 years just trying to make back what you lost in a market correction.
 
Dont Sell the markets have just started to move again in your favour.

I know how you feel with loseing money , i started investing early this year and i have been hit as well as the bulk of my portfolio is in the ftse.


When did you buy those shares ?
 
laiman said:
leave it as is its what im doing, wishing I gone far east though.
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Me to.

I was so nearly moving half of my portfolio there but in the end , got greedy and stuck with the big gains of the ftse.
 
I want to start this investment stuff, and I've read a few articles about it, but it's still a little confusing and I wouldn't know what I was doing.

You guys got any useful guides you can link me to?

Phil.
 
How long do you reckon it's going to take the US Dollar to recover? I was considering dumping some savings into a currency account at about 1.85 USD/GBP and hoping for it to regain strength.

Is this a good idea or likely to be a loss over time?

As for shares, I've lost about 11% on my bank shares since April, but I get 50% in number free if I hold them for 3 years. I can only hope the 50% will be worth anything come then!!
 
The more I think about it the more I think the markets will rebound.... As long as there is no Iran crisis or any nasty surprises around the corner, the markets will rebound. All the fundamentals are good (companies are more profitable than during the last big drop- the .dot com bubble), global interest and inflation are generally low (both of which keep money in the markets). I think all of this is a kneejerk reaction to the inflation levels in the states.

Personally though I have had enough of trackers and manages funds and their mixed- bag fortunes and holdings in so many shares it's impossible to make big gains. I am going to start going it alone to an extent. I have watched a few stocks I liked the look of increase by an average of about 80-90% in the last few months and I have a few more in mind where all the fundamentals seem good...
 
Alasdair said:
How long do you reckon it's going to take the US Dollar to recover? I was considering dumping some savings into a currency account at about 1.85 USD/GBP and hoping for it to regain strength.

Is this a good idea or likely to be a loss over time?

As for shares, I've lost about 11% on my bank shares since April, but I get 50% in number free if I hold them for 3 years. I can only hope the 50% will be worth anything come then!!
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Don't do that.... You could look at silver (a very undervalued commodity in my eyes) or even Gold still (be warned though, the summer is traditionally not a good time for gold prices) or as I said earlier, eastern funds. I can see the $ staying weak for a while yet.
 
OvertoneBliss said:
I want to start this investment stuff, and I've read a few articles about it, but it's still a little confusing and I wouldn't know what I was doing.

You guys got any useful guides you can link me to?

Phil.
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read, read and read some more. My advice, start with the motley fool books, which can be had off amazon for a good price second hand.
 
OvertoneBliss said:
I want to start this investment stuff, and I've read a few articles about it, but it's still a little confusing and I wouldn't know what I was doing.

You guys got any useful guides you can link me to?

Phil.
Click to expand...

www.fool.co.uk is a good place to start.

What kind of risk/ return are you looking for? Do you want a hands- on or hands off approach? have you used your ISA allowance this year yet? How much money do you have to invest? How long can you put the money away for?

Your profits in trackers/ funds are generally quite limited unless you have a decent amount (i.e. tens of thousands) to play with. They are safe to an extent.
You can get some trackers that guarantee an investment return after x years, but these don't tend to fall into an ISA wrapper so you will incur CGT and quite often only a proportion of the gains (if any).

Stocks.... Stay away from these until you know what you are doing. If you are interested in this, but a book called One up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch- it's very well writtern and easy for the novice investor to follow.
If you do want to try your hand at the stock market, get a virtual portfolio at bullbearings or fool or somewhere and play around for a few months.
I did write a post a while back on some good prospective areas for stocks and ideas on what to look out for when choosing companies to invest in but it might have been pruned by now.
Stocks- to give you an idea of the money required for 'effiicent' trades and a chance of a decent gain, I would personally look at investing a minimum of £1,000 into a company with good fundamentals. However, £500ish should probably also yield reasonable gains for you and make the trade 'worthwhile'. I say 'worthwhile' as you will need a broker to buy stock and they tend to charge per transaction. The cheapest seem to be Hoodless Brenan at £7 per trade, so you are 'losing' 1.5% of a £500 investment before you even get a share certificate! Obviously the more you invest per trade, the smaller the gain you need to be 'in profit'. Again, unless you wrap your investments in an ISA, you'll be taxed on any profits too!

Oh and don't bother with day trading or taking tips from the daily papers 'cause you'll crash and burn! Also, be very wary of penny shares- they're priced accordingly ;)

If you like I can post some more details on the markets tomorrow, but I'm knackered at the moment (so the above probably makes no sense lol!)
 
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