US Stock market decline

[mumof5andfat]

The current stock market decline in the US is making me anxious. I'm currently 10% down on my portfolio having been 10% up just over a month ago. I need to stop looking at it so often, but Trump's policies are just everywhere. one minute he's implemented tarriffs, the next he's changed his mind. Please someone give me some hope.....I know none of us can second guess what Trump will do next, but surely he can see the mess he's created in the financial markets? 4 years of this????

I agree don't keep checking. If you are happy with your portfolio leave it alone.

Unfortunately I am having to check mine regularly as I have just transferred 3 pensions into one and am working out where to put the cash. I also am making a one off contribution before end of tax year. The turmoil is making it difficult to decide what to do.

Think I will go for almost my original plan but leave out US funds and instead go for more global ones. I will also put some in MMF and drip feed into the equity funds to reduce short term risk.

Don't sell! Buy while it's cheap and watch it grow!

It's making me twitchy too but know logically not to look and not check very often.
Trump is such a loose cannon!

Why does everyone always say this assuming people have thousands sitting around .
FWIW OP I've ' lost ' £52k in the last few days thanks to Trumps insanity .
I'm just going to ride it out , these blips often happen and straighten out eventually.

We've also lost about £40k. We're still contributing every month and are scraping together any spare cash we can find to invest extra.

We're not going to need the money for another 10 years so should hopefully be ok by then.

My biggest worry is not relatively short term crashes which I believe will be the case with Trump but a lost decade which happened after the dot-com bubble.

You haven’t ‘lost’ anything until your pot is lower than the amount you’ve contributed and you’ve sold at a loss.
I may be down £20k from a week ago but I’m still up over 30% on 3 years ago, without factoring in any contributions.
The Nasdaq’s up slightly today in any case.

True. Overall I'm still up, but up by a lot less than I was a couple of months ago. I'll still keep ploughing money in though into global trackers.

Word of warning, make sure you know where all your global trackers are invested. I just checked mine and they were all over 70% US so hardly global despite their label.

All global trackers are at least 60% US. They're weighted by market cap.

We (stupidly) chucked 40k on the S&P 500 in January thinking it may go up or down within a 2k tolerance, we’ve checked this evening and we are 4k down right now. I know investing is a long game but we thought it was better than doing nothing and were willing to take a slight risk. It wasn’t until people at work mentioned the market today that I checked ours. We need to money to renovate our house (extension starting mid April). DP thinks we ride it out another month, I think we cut our losses now and get out. At least we still have 36k right? Anyone have any thing from their crystal ball that might help make a decision 🙃

I sold my stocks and shares isa wed last week and it is just sitting in cash in vanguard ready to reinvest. Will be watching to see what happens. I sold as my 50k went down by 2k overnight so got twitchy- hopefully missed some of the bigger drops.

I learned from the bonds fiasco 3 years ago not to put huge lump sums into anything, I lost 20% almost immediately in a ‘safe’ fund, I’d never done it before, always drip fed and I’ll never do it again. It was supremely bad timing that a savings account matured.

More recently, I had an inkling that very volatile times were ahead and wanted to safely ring fence a few years for early retirement so sold our entire Fundsmith holdings, which we’d held for 8 years , realising a near 100% gain was nice.

That is a tricky one. I would only invest if you don't need the money for 5 years. It depends if you think Trump is going to back down on tariffs and no one really has a clue about this. Bear markets in general though tend to average around 9 months until recovery.

Unless desperate just leave it be . Markets always have dips when something creates jitters and uncertainty but my view is you've already had a drop so don't fiddle about just wait it out for them to recover

OP I think the stock market is grossly overvalued at the moment. Loads of experienced investors (not twitter bros) have been saying for a while now that we are already in a historic bubble. Something's going to set it off sometime and that time might be now. Trump is making an absolute mess of things. Inflation is already up, at some point if the tariffs do enough damage people will have less money in their pocket, less to spend, and the economy will contract, jobs will go, and that's without factoring in the fear so many have for their jobs as he keeps cutting jobs and saying bizarre things like he's going to invade Greenland, side with Russia and make Canada another US state. It's bonkers.

Can you afford to sell some of your stock at the moment? If you can afford to hold on to it for a few more years it'll go up again of course but it depends if you can afford to not access it for the long run, just in case.

I’ve sold out of Disney, Nike, Amazon and Apple. I’ve kept Microsoft. I turned around and bought a Europe minus UK low cost tracker and a world tracker. I already have US and UK trackers where I have kept my positions.

Who knows?

My thinking was that the world is becoming more volatile and I want to be diversified. I’m moving away from individual stocks. Trump’s behaviour may have long reaching consequences for stability and global trade. I’m in my fifties, and I want to hedge against the possibility of de-globalisation. Sounds dramatic, but I think the last 80 years were very, very lucky. It’s not something you can create at the click of fingers.

Trump is a vandal.

Wow 52k I hope you get it back!!

We might be on track for a recession so I hope that you recover the money before that happens.

If you need the money in April you should just sell now. Nobody knows whether it will go up or down over the next couple of months.

You only lose it if you sell, otherwise it's just a paper loss. It's best to just keep investing regularly at these lower prices. You shouldn't be investing anyway if you might need to sell in the next 5 years.

As I think you now realise, investing in shares for 3 months is not sensible.

I'm not sure why you only thought shares would go +/- 5% in that time period - if you look at (for example) the first three months of 2020 global shares fell about 20% due to COVID. Back in 2008 when there was the banking crisis shares moved up or down as much as 10% in a single DAY.

Shares are only really for long term (10 years+) investing.

Unfortunately no-one can tell you what they will do between now and April.

Not really "stupid," but investing in a tracker for only four months is a mild form of gambling.

sorry that has happened to you. I put 20K into my GIA about 2 weeks ago because it had gone down about 3% and so I thought stick some more in. Obviously that was bad timing also so you are not alone.

Mine is for 'the future' generally so not as devastating as what you must be feeling. I plan to move house probably next year but thankfully have some cash savings to cover moving costs/stamp duty and only planning on swapping my house for one of a similar value anyway (no mortgage)

I watched a James Shack video on You Tube who basically said lump sum investing was actually better financially than dripping it in but harder on your mental health in case of big drops after you invest. They theory I think was the market goes up more often than it goes down and so the quicker you get your money in the market the better. He had lots of graphs and figures to prove this. He did say though for investors who couldn't cope with market ups and downs very well to drip feed just to stop them worrying etc.

As others have said putting it in when you need it in a few months wasn't the best plan but you live and learn. I can't advise you what to do but the markets seem to have gone up slightly today so who knows.

An update, not that many of you on here need it as you will also have noticed it’s gone down further, but my portfolio is almost 16% down (based on what I originally invested) I know I shouldn’t be soo anxious as I had put the money in as a long term investment, but it’s still painful. I’m honestly hoping Trump knows what he’s doing. Unfortunately for me, I think it be a good few years more that I’ll need to leave my investments in (forget 5, I think it’s going to be 10+ years for a decent enough return). On the plus side, the gold markets are doing well (although still down due to the falling dollar, but in dollar terms it’s increasing). And at least I have my buy to let. So I have diversified as much as I could, but it doesn’t take away the pain as much as I would like. I sympathise with everyone who looks at their portfolio and gets that awful feeling…… you’re not alone, but we must be patient. It’s only a loss if we sell at this point. It surely cannot keep going down forever.

It's shit but it's affecting everyone whether they are aware of it or not. Everyone with a pension is invested in the markets. The important thing is not to sell and to keep buying at regular intervals so you take advantage of the cheaper prices and are invested when the rise happens, which it will.

Hold your nerve, try not to check too much.

I’ve got 10% of my savings in a Hargreaves and Landsdowne stocks and shares ISA and the rest in ISAs getting about 4% interest. Also really annoyed with how my shares have nosedived after some initial promise when Trump came in. To be honest, I would have been better off putting the £10k of shares in the 4% ISAs. Don’t think now is the time to sell though.