Selling Shares - Help

Soldato
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15 Aug 2003
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Burton-upon-Trent
I received a letter yesterday telling me I had a modest amount of shares in Standard Life, this was from a previous job about 10 years ago that I had completely forgotten about.

Anyway the letter states that I can use the broker services free of charge up to November the 24th to cash in these shares. I'm probably going to do this but having never done this type of thing before I wanted to see if anyone has had any experience they could share with me on selling shares.

I have looked at the share price and the price quoted on the letter is the shares were worth £2.46 but today they seem to be worth about £2.10 each, yesterday dropping 19 pence.

Should I wait to see if the price goes back up or cach in now before they drop even further???? :confused:
 
If everyone knew the best time to sell shares we'd all be dealing in them :)
Share prices are very up & down at the moment and a 19p change on a day is quite common.
Unfortunately share prices are going to be like this for a little while.

If I was in your situation right now.
First I would look at the total value of these shares - work out roughly what I'd get.
Now do I "need" anything - so would this money come in really handy to buy something I need, clear off a debt etc.
If the answer is yes then I'd probably sell, although knowing at some point in the future prices may well go up.
If the answer is no, then I think I'd forgo the "free trading" offer and hold on to them - it won't cost you that much in the future to sell them anyway.
 
Agree with what stoofa said ^^. Should only cost you abotu £10 if that to trade them in past the deadline, so depending how many shares you've got you shouldn't need the price to rise that much for that fee to be nulled.
 
It's amazing how many people are getting letters asking to sell shares now that every man and his wife are panicing and bailing out. Do you know what you purchased them at & how many you have ? When you say 'modest' - do you mean you have 100 or 200 shares at approx £2.30 ?

Why not just hold onto them.....for all we know, they could be worth triple that in 4 years time.

It's hardly going to break the bank holding onto them for a while - you might make a killing on them, you might not...... but is it really worth cashing them in just becuase someone else suggested it ? Did you ever think why they might have sent you this letter all of a sudden...... it's in their own best interests - not yours.
 
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Main reason for thinking about selling them is that xmas is nearly here and some extra cash would be good.

I have more than 200 shares apparently so whilst it's not a great amount it is free money in a sense because it was the employer who contributed on everyone's behalf.

The shares are for Standard Life is anyone is interested.

There was a story in our local paper about lots of people in Derby who have unclaimed shares in Standard Life, reportedly someone has shared worth an estimated 100k. I so wished that was me.
 
Standard Life shares are 33% lower than what they were a year ago, 18% lower than what they were 3 years ago. So though they have lost a third of their value this year it's not like the upside of a surge in value is going to see them worth 12 quid each. i.e. getting the decision 'wrong' is unlikely to be masssively punitive. I'm not going to give you a recommendation either way, but that is information you might like to consider.
 
All banking / insurance etc shares have been badly hit recently - even more so than most other sectors. Have a look and see what they were worth a few months ago / a year ago.

They could easily go down further, but sooner or later, they will recover - but that could be a couple of years or more away - or it could be sooner.

It all really depends on your personal circumstances...
 
I'd probably wait a couple of years until the shares have recovered then sell. If I had any savings I'd be buying banking shares right now, once the market recovered I'd be loaded :)
 
I'd probably wait a couple of years until the shares have recovered then sell. If I had any savings I'd be buying banking shares right now, once the market recovered I'd be loaded :)

unless you picked the wrong bank and it was nationalised in which case you would loose all your money (Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley), or it could be taken over by another bank for less than market value in which case you would loose only some of your money(HBOS).

If a return on investment in banking shares was as easy as you suggest people would be buying them and they wouldn't be falling like a half rotten cow from the castle ramparts.
 
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