Where is the FTSE going?

[Digga]

Cardinal Hips said:

Could be worse I guess, could have gone for the Aston float @ £19 a pop and eaten a proper dogsh sarnie!

Wasn't so much a float as a floater.

As for cashing in. There is a part of me that wished I had with some of my funds (I don't 'do' shares, I'm not cut out for it), but another that would not be enjoying the "WTF comes next" experience we are now in.

[DonkeyApple]

This chap was a client of mine and one of the very few consistent performers. Year in, year out he would average around 30% being incredibly conservative. He’s probably one of the few people generally more bearish than I am. But he writes a good, short daily blog that is usually on the money: http://socialtradingreview.co.uk/social-trading/tr...

[Armitage.Shanks]

According to my portfolio on LSE site I've lost £599 today That said I'm still up £6k over the last 6 months. I've always taken a long-term view given they're tax free, I don't necessarily need the money for anything at the moment or think where else I could put it without giving me hassle so I'll ride it out.

[supercommuter]

Armitage.Shanks said:

According to my portfolio on LSE site I've lost £599 today That said I'm still up £6k over the last 6 months. I've always taken a long-term view given they're tax free, I don't necessarily need the money for anything at the moment or think where else I could put it without giving me hassle so I'll ride it out.

Same here, £600 loss on my HL S&S ISA....not real until i sell, which I wont;

[bitchstewie]

Think I'm about £3K down from where I was a week back on a 49K (ish) pot that started in February/March but still £2K up for now.

The money is there for the long term so the intention is do nothing and keep drip feeding.

Still interesting watching it play out.

[DonkeyApple]

rockin said:

..and Jesus of Nazareth pops round to change his toilet roll three sheets before it runs out.

? Almost all traders wipe out in the end. I’ve a client who has dropped £500k on his £500k account this week, which is plain depressing to see. Over twenty years I can honestly say I’ve only had two clients who consistently make profits every year. Traders just repeatedly trade too big or too often chasing profits which aren’t sustainable. In my view, 10-40% per annum is the sweet spot for sustainability.

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

US bond yields need to settle down really.

If anything, US bond yields appear to be doing exactly the opposite of "settling down".

Mr Trump says, "the Fed is going loco". Well, that should help.

[Digga]

bhstewie said:

Think I'm about £3K down from where I was a week back on a 49K (ish) pot that started in February/March but still £2K up for now...

Not quoting absolutes, but in terms of rough percentages, both mine and Mrs Digga's investments seem to have experienced similar.

bhstewie said:

The money is there for the long term so the intention is do nothing and keep drip feeding.

Still interesting watching it play out.

Likewise. Let's just hope we don't live to regret our curiosity!

[Armitage.Shanks]

DonkeyApple said:

? Almost all traders wipe out in the end. I’ve a client who has dropped £500k on his £500k account this week, which is plain depressing to see. Over twenty years I can honestly say I’ve only had two clients who consistently make profits every year. Traders just repeatedly trade too big or too often chasing profits which aren’t sustainable. In my view, 10-40% per annum is the sweet spot for sustainability.

So in a nutshell ride it out rather than chase the potential for profits?

[DonkeyApple]

Armitage.Shanks said:

DonkeyApple said:

? Almost all traders wipe out in the end. I’ve a client who has dropped £500k on his £500k account this week, which is plain depressing to see. Over twenty years I can honestly say I’ve only had two clients who consistently make profits every year. Traders just repeatedly trade too big or too often chasing profits which aren’t sustainable. In my view, 10-40% per annum is the sweet spot for sustainability.

So in a nutshell ride it out rather than chase the potential for profits?

I’m referring to traders rather than investors in the above. With investment it depends very much on personal risk profiles and crucially the time horizon involved. Most investors have long time horizons so these sell off periods aren’t all that relevant. If anything, when they end they present an opportunity to slightly over fund on the monthly investments.

On the trading side a trader should know very clearly what market conditions favour their style of trading. For most they favour rising markets so in conditions such as this it would make sense to sit it out, not in the market. Short term long positions should have been closed a while back to cut losses. October is crash month so any long only trader would have been very aware of the statistical risk and have wound down positions and deal sizes in advance anyway. Monday’s in October are especially favourable for crashes so you wouldn’t hold over weekends.

Where punters get it wrong is from holding on to loss making trades hoping they will bounce back in the short run, then they hope they will just bounce back to yesterday’s levels and finally their broker has to step in and close it out for them. They also start trying to guess the bottom and opening more long punts just to dig a deeper hole. Web stats for all retail brokers will have plummeted this month as clients decline to login to see how their positions have fallen and just hope that the market recovers before they are margined out.

[croyde]

Whoa!

My profit in 2 years of £21k was down to £16k yesterday. Can't bear to look.

Funds which I can't seem to sell until midday the next day so kind of ties my hands.

I did look, aaaaarghhh my eyes.

Now £14.7k, and that's on yesterday's price. Won't see today's damage until tomorrow.

Silly question, perhaps, but why aren't the fund managers selling high to buy low, or are they?

Edited by croyde on Friday 12th October 17:02

[xeny]

croyde said:

Silly question, perhaps, but why aren't the fund managers selling high to buy low, or are they?

Edited by croyde on Friday 12th October 17:02

Apart from any other consideration, to sell, there must be a buyer. Getting a buyer may mean a price lower than you are prepared to accept.

[Derek Chevalier]

croyde said:

Silly question, perhaps, but why aren't the fund managers selling high to buy low, or are they?

Edited by croyde on Friday 12th October 17:02

That would assume they knew something was going to go from high to low

[Simpo Two]

DonkeyApple said:

Where punters get it wrong is from holding on to loss making trades hoping they will bounce back in the short run, then they hope they will just bounce back to yesterday’s levels and finally their broker has to step in and close it out for them. They also start trying to guess the bottom and opening more long punts just to dig a deeper hole. Web stats for all retail brokers will have plummeted this month as clients decline to login to see how their positions have fallen and just hope that the market recovers before they are margined out.

And yet professional advisers will say, in such times, 'Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover'. And that goes along with their ethos of 'Only look once a year' followed by 'You can't time the markets/we don't have a crystal ball'.

The platform my last adviser set me up on (you can read that both ways) was broken today anyway and calls go straight to answerphone.

Furthermore I was surprised how little coverage there was in the news yesterday. I switched on expecting to see it as headlines... nope, the journos seem much more interested in Syrian babies.

Me, I'm gonna sell crystal balls

[Derek Chevalier]

Simpo Two said:

And yet professional advisers will say, in such times, 'Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover'. And that goes along with their ethos of 'Only look once a year' followed by 'You can't time the markets/we don't have a crystal ball'.

Two things

1. the portfolios that advisers would (hopefully) construct are a world away from the (in a lot of cases) punts that a lot of individuals would be taking on individual shares

2. I'm not sure why you don't agree with:

'Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover' - this has been true throughout all history (or at least all the data we have (on a global basis))

'Only look once a year' - what is the upside of looking more frequently?


'You can't time the markets/we don't have a crystal ball'. - run a mile from someone who suggests otherwise

[DonkeyApple]

Simpo Two said:

And yet professional advisers will say, in such times, 'Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover'. And that goes along with their ethos of 'Only look once a year' followed by 'You can't time the markets/we don't have a crystal ball'.

The platform my last adviser set me up on (you can read that both ways) was broken today anyway and calls go straight to answerphone.

Furthermore I was surprised how little coverage there was in the news yesterday. I switched on expecting to see it as headlines... nope, the journos seem much more interested in Syrian babies.

Me, I'm gonna sell crystal balls

Don’t forget that I’m referring to trading here, not investing as Derek highlights.

Re platforms, investment platforms are way more clunky than trading platforms as there is no need for them to be rapid processing platforms.

[anonymous-user]

croyde said:

Whoa!
My profit in 2 years of £21k was down to £16k yesterday. Can't bear to look.

Funds which I can't seem to sell until midday the next day so kind of ties my hands.

I did look, aaaaarghhh my eyes.

Now £14.7k, and that's on yesterday's price. Won't see today's damage until tomorrow.

One thing that I certainly seem to notice is that my fund management company can lose a k or more a day with no problem but always seem to take days/weeks/months to recover the previous position then go through the cycle again.

[Simpo Two]

Derek Chevalier said:

1. the portfolios that advisers would (hopefully) construct are a world away from the (in a lot of cases) punts that a lot of individuals would be taking on individual shares

2. I'm not sure why you don't agree with:

'Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover' - this has been true throughout all history (or at least all the data we have (on a global basis))

'Only look once a year' - what is the upside of looking more frequently?

'You can't time the markets/we don't have a crystal ball'. - run a mile from someone who suggests otherwise

The disconnect is that Mr Concerned Punter believes that by paying a professional adviser of finance, he will have his hand held through the difficult times. To be told 'Yeah whatever' is somewhat disappointing. If you hire a plumber you expect him to be better at plumbing than you are. My last IFA happily invested six-figure sums of my life savings into 'portfolios' of his own design only to admit later he wasn't a fund picker. What differentiates a salesman of financial products from a fund picker?

If all the alleged professional is going to say is ''Ah but Mr Concerned Punter, it desn't matter, because it will recover' that hardly seems worth 1% to me. (a thread on this matter was deleted out of embarassment!). We do not expect perfection, nor a crystal ball, but we expect something beyond an 'annual review' of copy/paste paragraphs.

DonkeyApple said:

Don’t forget that I’m referring to trading here, not investing as Derek highlights.

Re platforms, investment platforms are way more clunky than trading platforms as there is no need for them to be rapid processing platforms.

That's an interesting distinction I hadn't considered, and I appreciate you're rather higher up the food chain. I view trading and investing as the same. Both are designed (obviously or we wouldn't do it) to make money. Perhaps it's just the timeframe that's shorter?

[DonkeyApple]

speedyguy said:

One thing that I certainly seem to notice is that my fund management company can lose a k or more a day with no problem but always seem to take days/weeks/months to recover the previous position then go through the cycle again.

Markets never crash up.

[DonkeyApple]

Simpo Two said:

I view trading and investing as the same. Both are designed (obviously or we wouldn't do it) to make money. Perhaps it's just the timeframe that's shorter?

I agree. An investor like Buffet might be hedging but he will hold his positions as he has a much longer timeframe and has taken positions with a much bigger macro view. My clients are all short term from seconds to weeks and all should have been flat or shorting this market.

I’ve not even looked at my pension or isa. They will have lost this month and I can’t imagine they’ll make much at all this year but I’ve been short on my PA trades. I very rarely trade unless there is a really strong market trend and then I scale in slowly, building a position and moving stops to lock in gains.