S&P500 at record highs - time to stay in or pull out?
Discussion
g4ry13 said:
Car bon said:
The same could be said for watching the news in general I suppose.....
Yes, people would generally be far happier if they invested less time in things which they had no influence or control over. But that's a topic for elsewhere
And you’ll almost certainly make more money.
I’ve moved everything into that and it’s by far the best decision I made.
I might even match my wife’s fundoercormancevthat she only checks twice a year at best
Dewi 2 said:
Two points.
Having been a careful investor you might want to consider an Aston Martin rather than a very expensive to own Ferrari.
I bought a perfect V8 Vantage when it was 2 years old. A beautiful fun car, 450 bhp is more than adequate, no faults and depreciation has totalled less than £30,000 during 14 years of ownership. That is probably less than had I bought a new BMW 3 Series.
As you have said, E type prices started going up, but the people who grew up wanting to buy have now mostly bought. The number of recent buyers has consequently reduced. E types which were selling for around £100,000, are now available for about £60,000.
I wonder if the fast Ford prices will do the same as the E Type when all the people who grew up wanting them have paid silly money.
g4ry13 said:
A friend of mine has a lumpy 6 figure sum (maybe even 7 figures) in investments and he watches the markets like a hawk. He finds it stressful when markets drop a few % and gets excited about Vanguard making new highs. The problem is he's an investor in it for the long-haul.
I ask what monitoring the markets adds to his life if it's not going to influence his investment decisions and has an emotional price. Some people just can't pull themselves away from it.
I think for some people it does become a bit addictive.I ask what monitoring the markets adds to his life if it's not going to influence his investment decisions and has an emotional price. Some people just can't pull themselves away from it.
That’s often amplified with active funds, because they can feel a bit like placing bets - there’s this constant urge to check whether you “called it right” and that naturally pulls you into watching markets day-to-day.
Whereas if you’re just buying the whole market, the premise is much simpler: you’re backing global growth over decades. In that context, checking daily movements doesn’t really add anything, because the outcome you care about is so far in the future. Surprised to hear a long term index fund investor would be so preoccupied with it though!
Speaking from my own experience, my portfolio is comfortably into seven figures now, and I probably only check it a couple of times a year. A lot of it is in a SIPP I won’t touch for nearly 20 years, so short-term movements are completely irrelevant.
Ironically when I had much less invested and it was in active funds, I was far more obsessed with checking it all the time.
simon800 said:
g4ry13 said:
A friend of mine has a lumpy 6 figure sum (maybe even 7 figures) in investments and he watches the markets like a hawk. He finds it stressful when markets drop a few % and gets excited about Vanguard making new highs. The problem is he's an investor in it for the long-haul.
I ask what monitoring the markets adds to his life if it's not going to influence his investment decisions and has an emotional price. Some people just can't pull themselves away from it.
I think for some people it does become a bit addictive.I ask what monitoring the markets adds to his life if it's not going to influence his investment decisions and has an emotional price. Some people just can't pull themselves away from it.
That s often amplified with active funds, because they can feel a bit like placing bets - there s this constant urge to check whether you called it right and that naturally pulls you into watching markets day-to-day.
Whereas if you re just buying the whole market, the premise is much simpler: you re backing global growth over decades. In that context, checking daily movements doesn t really add anything, because the outcome you care about is so far in the future. Surprised to hear a long term index fund investor would be so preoccupied with it though!
Speaking from my own experience, my portfolio is comfortably into seven figures now, and I probably only check it a couple of times a year. A lot of it is in a SIPP I won t touch for nearly 20 years, so short-term movements are completely irrelevant.
Ironically when I had much less invested and it was in active funds, I was far more obsessed with checking it all the time.
I used to have some individual stock picks to satisfy that urge to tinker with my main investments, nothing flashy, just alongside my two broad ETFs. But if anything that just highlighted how little I actually knew
so I ended up selling those too and simplifying everything.I think that’s the key difference. If you’re genuinely long term and bought into the whole “own the market” idea, the behaviour doesn’t need to match the noise. Checking is fine if it stays harmless, but once it starts influencing decisions or your mood, that’s where it becomes a problem.
768 said:
pingu393 said:
My portfolio is going mental at the moment.
There must be a Trump rebound coming to rebound this rebound
Must have been a dip this time last year, I'm 33% up in 12 months apparently. I'll take that every year please.There must be a Trump rebound coming to rebound this rebound
The markets got hammered by Trumps tariff brain fart in April last year, hence the high growth rate when you reference that low value moment in time.
The funds you look at are closing positions, sometimes days previously. If you find the fund number you can put that into the Financial Times charting page and look at the funds performance. It shows you the previous close data such as change in the last full day, plus historical data going back up to 10 years.
If you want to understand what the fund holds you can go to the assets and holdings tab, the assets section gives you a market sector and geography information, you can also see the top 10 holdings in the fund.
You can then drill down to individual company holdings info, for example Lion Finance, it's usually updated every 15 minutes. until market close.
a311 said:
....once it starts influencing decisions or your mood, that s where it becomes a problem.
That’s a key point. If checking your portfolio starts to affect your emotions or decision-making, then the simplest fix is to check less often.You often see posts along the lines of “my portfolio has dropped £30k in three days 😡,” followed by someone panic-selling at the bottom and then chasing something else to try to “make it back.” That’s not a strategy, it’s emotional decision-making, and it usually leads to worse outcomes.
If someone can check frequently without it influencing their behaviour, then fair enough of course.
But realistically, most investors (not all, but most) are better off choosing an asset allocation that matches their risk tolerance, sticking with it, and only checking occasionally to make sure everything is still on track.
I hadn’t looked at my Pots since the start of the year and normally look quickly once every 3 months but we were away.
Annually I do a deeper dive.
Since stopping work I don’t invest lump sums anymore but equally all of the various Pots are invested in Funds and I’m happy to continue looking at as a marathon.
As long as my Primary Pot ( CETV Pension ) grows annually by anything above the drawdown percentage I’m happy.
Even my old Intelligent money ( now Cobens ) pot ( split over 5 funds ) was up just over 5% from year end.
Annually I do a deeper dive.
Since stopping work I don’t invest lump sums anymore but equally all of the various Pots are invested in Funds and I’m happy to continue looking at as a marathon.
As long as my Primary Pot ( CETV Pension ) grows annually by anything above the drawdown percentage I’m happy.
Even my old Intelligent money ( now Cobens ) pot ( split over 5 funds ) was up just over 5% from year end.
simon800 said:
a311 said:
....once it starts influencing decisions or your mood, that s where it becomes a problem.
That s a key point. If checking your portfolio starts to affect your emotions or decision-making, then the simplest fix is to check less often.You often see posts along the lines of my portfolio has dropped £30k in three days ?, followed by someone panic-selling at the bottom and then chasing something else to try to make it back. That s not a strategy, it s emotional decision-making, and it usually leads to worse outcomes.
If someone can check frequently without it influencing their behaviour, then fair enough of course.
But realistically, most investors (not all, but most) are better off choosing an asset allocation that matches their risk tolerance, sticking with it, and only checking occasionally to make sure everything is still on track.
I like to think of myself as a looker who won't be influenced, but I know that's not true.
I took my mate to get a car yesterday. I haven't the heart to tell him that I would still be in daily profit if I'd bought it for him. The downside is that when it falls by ten times that amount, the tempation is to bail. It's only previous experience that tells me not to. I really fear for the new S+S ISA investors. I think they will cursing our Rachel when their portfolios start to lose money, and they bail.
We all tell ourselves that we have done our risk assessment, timeframe planning and asset allocation and when we check our accounts and see the portfolio down by 10, 20 or 30 % we will remember the plan and just sit tight.
But it is incredibly hard to do. Easier perhaps once you have been doing it a while and especially when you are so far up in absolute terms that you can write off the ‘loss’ as a loss of paper profit.
But however hard this discipline is, it almost always the correct thing to do. Easy access trading apps on your phone make it 10x harder though. It’s all too much information too often.
You have to ask yourself why you are ‘just checking’?
Surely there are better things you can be doing bearing in mind you have told yourself you’re not going to make any knee jerk reactions to short term price changes?
But it is incredibly hard to do. Easier perhaps once you have been doing it a while and especially when you are so far up in absolute terms that you can write off the ‘loss’ as a loss of paper profit.
But however hard this discipline is, it almost always the correct thing to do. Easy access trading apps on your phone make it 10x harder though. It’s all too much information too often.
You have to ask yourself why you are ‘just checking’?
Surely there are better things you can be doing bearing in mind you have told yourself you’re not going to make any knee jerk reactions to short term price changes?
pingu393 said:
I took my mate to get a car yesterday. I haven't the heart to tell him that I would still be in daily profit if I'd bought it for him.
That would be a VERY odd thing to bring up.pingu393 said:
I really fear for the new S+S ISA investors. I think they will cursing our Rachel when their portfolios start to lose money, and they bail.
Hopefully, most will have read enough to know they need to be in for several years. It would be great, really, if there could be a bit of teaching of this stuff in the school curriculum.I look at the VLS60/80 prices (the bulk of our investments) most days simply out of interest and how world events impact them..
Fortunately we don't have to rely on it for general living costs as that's all covered, it's simply a massive comfort blanket.
I remember my father in law who was heavily invested but (still financially secure otherwise) panicking over every downward move. He took most of it to his grave rhetorically as he was too tight to spend it.
Fortunately we don't have to rely on it for general living costs as that's all covered, it's simply a massive comfort blanket.
I remember my father in law who was heavily invested but (still financially secure otherwise) panicking over every downward move. He took most of it to his grave rhetorically as he was too tight to spend it.
I admit to checking Google finance too often and is likely most of the time an actual waste of time however more importantly I have learned to control my behaviour so dont tend to make impulse decisions regarding buying/selling funds though room for improvement.
If I have learned one thing regarding my behaviour and investments it's that the more simple the setup e.g: minimal no..of funds/etfs such as a single find or relatively small number of equity/bond funds then am less likely to tinker.
If I have learned one thing regarding my behaviour and investments it's that the more simple the setup e.g: minimal no..of funds/etfs such as a single find or relatively small number of equity/bond funds then am less likely to tinker.
Simpo Two said:
Phooey said:
Puzzles said:
Yep it seems mental
It does, but it's not unsurprising. The market is seeing progress, that the worst has been and gone, and a resolution will be found.The UK is getting the worst effect because we rely more on energy imports. And why would that be? Ah yes, we closed the power stations and built windmills instead. Effect on climate change? Zip. Effect on the citizens? £££. Well done Millipede and all the green nutters. Want to 'just stop oil'? Well now you see what happens if you do.
Hustle_ said:
PeteTaylor99 said:
Hustle_ said:
Simpo Two said:
Hustle_ said:
Simpo Two said:
The UK is getting the worst effect because we rely more on energy imports. And why would that be? Ah yes, we closed the power stations and built windmills instead. Effect on climate change? Zip. Effect on the citizens? £££. Well done Millipede and all the green nutters. Want to 'just stop oil'? Well now you see what happens if you do.
So what do you think we should be running on then? To me it reads as 'coal'? Because we are currently building new nuclear and gas-fired power stations? 732NM said:
This interpretation brought to you by the UK Oil & Gas lobby
Also what no one seems to mention is the more renewable energy we use the longer our limited oil and gas lasts, which is useful.
simon800 said:
a311 said:
....once it starts influencing decisions or your mood, that s where it becomes a problem.
That s a key point. If checking your portfolio starts to affect your emotions or decision-making, then the simplest fix is to check less often.You often see posts along the lines of my portfolio has dropped £30k in three days ?, followed by someone panic-selling at the bottom and then chasing something else to try to make it back. That s not a strategy, it s emotional decision-making, and it usually leads to worse outcomes.
If someone can check frequently without it influencing their behaviour, then fair enough of course.
But realistically, most investors (not all, but most) are better off choosing an asset allocation that matches their risk tolerance, sticking with it, and only checking occasionally to make sure everything is still on track.
VR99 said:
I admit to checking Google finance too often and is likely most of the time an actual waste of time however more importantly I have learned to control my behaviour so dont tend to make impulse decisions regarding buying/selling funds though room for improvement.
If I have learned one thing regarding my behaviour and investments it's that the more simple the setup e.g: minimal no..of funds/etfs such as a single find or relatively small number of equity/bond funds then am less likely to tinker.
If I have learned one thing regarding my behaviour and investments it's that the more simple the setup e.g: minimal no..of funds/etfs such as a single find or relatively small number of equity/bond funds then am less likely to tinker.
It seems to be human nature for emotions to influence decision making, especially at times when your hoped for investment is sinking fast.
I have been doing regular valuations at the conclusion of every business week, since 1 January 1988 (only 10 minutes once a week).
Imagine how many stock market crashes there have been during that time. Having experience of difficult times is not fun, but it is all part of investment learning.
I have described my strategy on PH several times before, but as decision making is being discussed now, there might be some who are interested.
My method is to completely separate reality, from the natural human impulse to make selling, or change decisions.
Let's go back to 2002, which was one of three consecutive years when panic was widespread.
My charts are created automatically from each annual (updated weekly) spreadsheet.
In line with the very sensible concept, of keeping investment as simple as possible, only three percentages are of any importance.
The only time that decisions could be required, is if the green line consistently fails to keep up with the red line.
It might seem strange to be happy when seeing 6% of investment lost, but see the red line.
We won't talk about buying when markets are down. I have not discovered a miracle system for that. Intuition, logic and hope seems to be the only way.
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