You could have warned us a month a go

Aye, mine’s knocking on 29% up at the moment too.

I do find stock market reporting ridiculous. Trying to find something informative about the China situation and the stories are all "China stock rebound sharply with highest 1 day gains in 2 years" and "China pumping money into stocks and the market is loving it!", while neglecting to mention the record two day loss or the fact the market has lost 20% over the last 8 months or so.

Is this all wrapped up in the real estate fallout?

No, over a couple of years. But it's done about 10% since Christmas.

Out of curiosity, I looked up my old workplace pension scheme.  I only had it because it was mandated.  I took no notice of it at the time. 

There's a hundred quid sitting in it and it's dwindling away to nothing as they take monthly fees.  Any way to transfer that to something useful?  Either my own workplace or someplace cheaper?  £100 is fuck all in the grand scheme of things but it's better going to me than some cunt banker.

drumbeg wrote:

GooberTheHat wrote:

I do find stock market reporting ridiculous. Trying to find something informative about the China situation and the stories are all "China stock rebound sharply with highest 1 day gains in 2 years" and "China pumping money into stocks and the market is loving it!", while neglecting to mention the record two day loss or the fact the market has lost 20% over the last 8 months or so.

 

The same could be said of S & P 500 reporting for 2023. It basically recovered the losses of the previous year, yet there was hardly any context given.

Some of the figure reporting in the last few posts in here has been iffy too

Totally agree, it's always amazing or catastrophic. Never just ticking along.

GooberTheHat wrote:

I do find stock market reporting ridiculous. Trying to find something informative about the China situation and the stories are all "China stock rebound sharply with highest 1 day gains in 2 years" and "China pumping money into stocks and the market is loving it!", while neglecting to mention the record two day loss or the fact the market has lost 20% over the last 8 months or so. Is this all wrapped up in the real estate fallout?

It's complicated, which is why the general idea of the thread is set and forget. You have the usual internet bollocks when it comes to anything involving making money, political influence from nervous governments and just general nonsense. It's best to dispense with headlines and just look at graphs, and even then it's never the whole truth.

China is spending huge sums trying to get people in the West to invest during the panic. This will lead to false stories. It's easy enough to check the actual graphs from reputable sites but even then it's not the whole story. In the case of China right now it's because the Chinese government is almost certainly pumping massive amounts of money in by buying up shares to try and slow the panic, but it's only almost certain. You can never quite know and never know how much. It's all speculation and the ones that get it right make cash.

If you are going to gamble and put it in things that aren't the S&P then it's best to do it in things you know about. In my case it was Nintendo (before the Switch release) and AI (Nvidia). Even then it took a few stiff whiskys to take the plunge. I usually mull something over for a few months without checking any stock pick sites, think about long term trends instead, and then one night get really pissed and buy way too many shares. 

I don't advise ever buying shares when you're pissed but it works for me, but only after a few months of sober thought. It usually involves waking up, not remembering for a few seconds, followed by a nervous walk to the PC to see how much you've bought, and it's never just a bit.

For a quiet life I'd suggest only the S&P. Monthly investments without fail, and maybe increase the amount during the bad times. The only thing to worry about is at the end, where you'll slowly transition away from the markets into things like bonds. Even then climate change might fuck the whole thing but we'll have bigger things to worry about if that happens. 

S&P all the way. We're entering an era of isolationism and America are better prepared than anyone. In fact they're the ones leading the charge by shoring up everything closer to home. IF Trump gets in. and that's a big if, he'll probably cut corporation tax immediately and the S&P will jump up for a while until someone sensible gets in. Good for us in the short term but it'll have consequences later on. But we shouldn't care. It's 20yr trends we're concerned about.

Never go looking for picks and never trust anyone's advice, including mine. Everyone thinks they have a system until it breaks. Trust your own brain and see what happens.

Having said that here's The Drunken System.

As mentioned, don't go looking for picks. Just live your life until you read something that makes your brain go "Mmmmm". Mine was while looking at Gamespot in the WiiU days and seeing an article about the dramatic fall of Nintendo shares. 

Think about long term future. Which way are things heading? Will AI see an exponential growth? If you think so don't worry about the current price of Nvidia, which btw is really expensive. 

Think of all the pros and cons. Write a list. The cons are important because a single one can fuck it all, so you need to be right about all of them. Let's do Nvidia.

Pros:

The rise in AI - fairly positive about this.
They're way out ahead - also unlikely to change if you're right about potential cons.

Cons:

How important is the CEO? -  If he dies tomorrow will that radically affect things long term? Do some research, I'd argue they got lucky and it doesn't matter to much. Right place at the right time.

How fragile are they? - They design chips but they don't manufacture them. This might be a problem. Taiwan etc. Will America let this happen? Probably not. If it does can Nvidia overcome it? Well AI might, and my personal assumption is they'll eventually build their own chips.

Legislation? - How likely is it that a law can fuck them up? How likely is it that an 'AI event' will kill lots of people? I'd argue that neither will have significant long term impact. It's an arms race and America will not let itself fall behind.


Personal opinions but that's the sort of thing you should be thinking about. 

AND THEN DO NOTHING. Let it just sit in your brain and don't buy a thing. Carry on as normal as as the months go past you'll see news articles here and there, notice stuff, have a few more thoughts. Let your subconscious do the work. Go out, get drunk, don't overthink it and don't rush it.

Then slowly your brain starts nagging at you, bits here and there. It's not a conscious decision but it tends to manifest. Not all lists come to fruition and after a while you'll simply forget about investing in that particular thing. But some don't go away and eventually, after one drunken session, you'll wake up and know that you did it last night. You might not remember how much you bought but it's shit the bed time.

This is my system. Is it a good idea? No, it's a fucking terrible idea. But it's no worse than listening to a paid professional. They get their cut regardless and their advice is just as bad. The only good idea is to invest in the S&P.

Surely the experts do all that and that's kinda what the share price is? Modulo guesswork.

I'm sure there a load of Warhammer nerds that have made a ton. Why? Because they understood the product. It'll come on your radar before it does some guy in a suit.

Matt_82 wrote:

Yes there is. All workplace pensions are portable once you quit. You may have to write an email. Check your d pension’s website for some FAQ on porting it out

Thanks, man.  I take it "d pension" was meant to be "old pension"?  I have a decent workplace pension where I am just now.  Would I be aiming to port it into that? Is that a thing? I'm not holding out much hope mind you.  Every review is saying that they don't respond to contact so I'll see how it goes.

You can make a transfer request.  Use Pensions Bee or whoever, someone like that.  There are statutory deadlines for them to deal with it.  If they don't, you can raise a complaint.  If that doesn't solve it, you can go to The Pensions Ombudsman.

Sounds like overkill if it ever gets to that and it it: companies/pension providers can lose thousands and thousands on complaint cases via time spent and fees etc.

EDIT: if it's just £100 or so, Pensions Bee and the like won't work, they cost a little I think.

Here’s an example of short-term thinking that makes for bad investing advice.

I was talking with a guy yesterday whose job it is to know about all the tech moves happening in Scotland. What companies are investing, why, what facilities are being built, who’s funding what, etc. He knows that a particular small firm who make miniature LED displays have just signed a £50m ‘sweetener’ contract to guarantee that they’ll sell their next five years of output exclusively to Meta, for VR headsets. So he think he should buy shares in them now.

He’s wrong. He should have bought into them before that deal and sold next week, after the news gets out. From there on they won’t be growing. Their shares won’t rise.

And besides - that sort of short term thinking is just gambling. Not investing.

Matt_82 wrote:

Thank you.  I tried Pension Bee before I saw your edit and it seemed to be happy about going ahead so I suppose I'll find out soon enough if it gets kicked back.

Thanks again, lads.

This is a good idea (and yes I meant old pension sorry), PensionBee are free to transfer in (your old pension may have a smallish transfer out fee, using flat rates at £10 or £20) and their whole business model relies on people creating a new pension account and transferring in from various old workplace pensions, so they make it easy for you and do all the legwork. It may take some time but eventually you’ll have the money, and a place to chuck some spare cash every so often into a flexible cheap pension account (the tracker fund is overall cost 0.5% which is v good for platform + fees and looks mostly at S&P500)

GooberTheHat wrote:

Surley investing in them before the deal is signed, in the hopes that it will be, is also gambling?

Sounds like insider dealing to me, if it's signed but that fact isn't in the public domain

But never take the advice of a professional pick. There's software that can do all the inspecting grunt for you when it comes to figures anyway, not that I'd advise that either. It's better to bet on talent. Who's got the best people at changing the world? The big tech firms, mainly. Financial people are not very good at understanding the true long term implications of tech. They know AI is the next shiny big thing but they still don't get it.