My portfolio desperately wants Golfie to be right but I'm afraid my head is leaning towards @Fortune 82nd Minute view. I'd be happy if FTSE 100 stays between 5000-6000 until such time as a vaccine is available. For all that markets are supposedly "looking 6 months ahead" they dont seem to have factored in that many of their global favourites may have suffered permanent damage. E.g. Boeing.
Markets showing more strength today, which I find, frankly, baffling.
The markets are always looking ahead at least 6 months.
I've often heard this said. All I can say they must be using the GS briefings (still saying this will all soon blow over) and using rose coloured glasses to think things are going to quickly return to normal.
Briefly, amongst the things in last week's news:-
OBR saying curbs staying in place for three months will slash GDP by 35 per cent,
with unemployment soaring to 10 per cent and the government's deficit
hitting £273billion - the highest level since the Second World War.
OBR also saying Public sector net borrowing increases by £218 billion in 2020-21
relative to their March budget forecast (to reach £273 billion or 14 per cent of
GDP). Say that again, £218 billion!
the IMF predicting the worst global downturn since the Great Depression in 1929
the Sunday Times carrying an article predicting dividends paid out this year will fall to £50 billion from £75 billion last year. (That is a huge hit)
a forecast spike in inflation.
And today's Sunday Times has a whole host of gloomy predictions about what might happen if the lockdown continues eg failure to ease restrictions will mean 6 out of 10 businesses running out of cash within 12 weeks.
We have no real idea how the lockdown will end and how successful it will be. Suppose there is a huge hike in the number of cases and the lockdown has to be re-imposed? What then?
History has proved that markets do always rise again (although one of my favourite statistics is that when the markets started to fall in early 2000, it took 15 years for the FTSE to return to the level it was on 31/12/99. Could that happen again here when/if the gravity of the situation is really realised ?
The reason I think that the markets will rebound even further is that for every person suffering financially, there are possibly as many benefiting financially (as their expenses have reduced and they haven't spent on holidays, restaurants etc etc).
Plus interest rates are at an all time low and savers have more incentive to spend as they are earning very little on savings.
There is a big pent up demand already for people to go out and spend money and enjoy themselves. So no I don't think the markets will hit early 2020 levels for 2 years or maybe more, but I'm still confident that when the FTSE 100 (for instance) was at the 5,000 level a few weeks back that was a good buying opportunity and if it slides back there again in the next 12 months, it may be so again.
Posters with established portfolios, where are you now compared with 12 months ago? I've just checked and was pleasantly surprised to find I am almost at parity. My main take out on that is, that it was not necessary to fret over your losses compared to the point when the pandemic took over. Markets were close to all time highs then, and that was not sustainable anyway.
The current oil situ is truly amazing. Unprecedented has become the most boring word in the dictionary the last few weeks, but a scenario where an asset is negatively priced is extraordinary. Oil names to get another slap today
The current oil situ is truly amazing. Unprecedented has become the most boring word in the dictionary the last few weeks, but a scenario where an asset is negatively priced is extraordinary. Oil names to get another slap today
Yes, I'm beginning to wish I'd sold RDSB last week for a small profit. But I didn't, so I'll just have to wait....and hope....
Posters with established portfolios, where are you now compared with 12 months ago? I've just checked and was pleasantly surprised to find I am almost at parity. My main take out on that is, that it was not necessary to fret over your losses compared to the point when the pandemic took over. Markets were close to all time highs then, and that was not sustainable anyway.
Sshhh @PragueAddick. Posters don't want to hear that. According to some its Armageddon time & we are all going to hell in a handcart.
FWIW, my pension portfolio yesterday was down around 7% from its February high. Helps that I have 2 funds that have made double digit gains since then - Allianz Strategic Bond fund & Argonaut Absolute Return fund. Shame they make up less than 10% of my portfolio, but they have done what they were supposed to do. A couple of UK equity funds that I daren''t even work out their losses to date. One is an AIM fund and has made loads on the way up so no surprise its leaked loads on the way down.
Still overall not too shabby & my pension is still 10% higher than it was at the start of 2019.
Posters with established portfolios, where are you now compared with 12 months ago? I've just checked and was pleasantly surprised to find I am almost at parity. My main take out on that is, that it was not necessary to fret over your losses compared to the point when the pandemic took over. Markets were close to all time highs then, and that was not sustainable anyway.
I'm about 2% down on my all time high in my SIPP and up about 10% on my ISA's all time high prior to the pandemic. I trade quite a lot in my SIPP and had moved a fair amount into bonds and gold last year, and have done reasonably well in the last 6 weeks on some individual shares.
I'd love to say my ISA is down to my superb investment skills, but it was pure luck on timing. I cashed in the S&S into cash to switch providers when the markets were still high. Between my old and new provider they managed to royally mess it up, for some reason couldn't transfer electronically, sent cheques that got lost, then COVID hit so it ended up taking almost 9 weeks for the money to transfer. In the meantime the market was down so I reinvested at a low level.
Allianz Strategic Bond fund looks like it has performed very well. My portfolio is back in the blue, standout performer looks to be Baillie Gifford Positive Change.
Allianz Strategic Bond fund looks like it has performed very well. My portfolio is back in the blue, standout performer looks to be Baillie Gifford Positive Change.
Good work. I'd be in blue but for the facts that I've been "Woodforded", and also had one turkey, Baring German Growth, which has done the opposite of what it said on the tin. I used last week to swap it for Jupiter Europe, which I had already done within my SIPP and which worked well.
@Rob7Lee Interesting about the problems of switching providers. I had the same problem when I did that for my SIPP, just before the referendum. Took AJ Bell and H-L over four weeks, and they didn't even seem to think it was something worth apologising for. This looks like another area for regulatory action.
Am a bit worried about my portfolio in the face of a global recession. It's been built and based on the good times really and am slightly concerned it may be tad risky / not robust enough for the immediate term.
Is it too late to move Portfolio allocation slightly more into Bonds? In this portfolio, near 100pc is in equities, mixed between International, Uk and Europe. Is it silly to transfer funds while they're heavily down? Hope v reality.
Allianz Strategic Bond fund looks like it has performed very well. My portfolio is back in the blue, standout performer looks to be Baillie Gifford Positive Change.
Good work. I'd be in blue but for the facts that I've been "Woodforded", and also had one turkey, Baring German Growth, which has done the opposite of what it said on the tin. I used last week to swap it for Jupiter Europe, which I had already done within my SIPP and which worked well.
@Rob7Lee Interesting about the problems of switching providers. I had the same problem when I did that for my SIPP, just before the referendum. Took AJ Bell and H-L over four weeks, and they didn't even seem to think it was something worth apologising for. This looks like another area for regulatory action.
I probably spent in excess of 40 hours on the phone to HSBC and maybe 10 with Fidelity, and no, they didn't seem all that bothered although still awaiting for the outcome of my complaint.
Am a bit worried about my portfolio in the face of a global recession. It's been built and based on the good times really and am slightly concerned it may be tad risky / not robust enough for the immediate term.
Is it too late to move Portfolio allocation slightly more into Bonds? In this portfolio, near 100pc is in equities, mixed between International, Uk and Europe. Is it silly to transfer funds while they're heavily down? Hope v reality.
Probably a bit too late now. Wait for a rally, maybe a 10% rise then diverse.
BG Positive Change is one of the best global funds currently. Was thinking of moving some of my Argonaut Absolute funds over into it as I'm not sure how much more growth it can sustain & also to take advantage of any upswing when global markets start going back up again.
Jupiter European is another good shout. Used it over the past 18 months for clients although not recently.
Posters with established portfolios, where are you now compared with 12 months ago? I've just checked and was pleasantly surprised to find I am almost at parity. My main take out on that is, that it was not necessary to fret over your losses compared to the point when the pandemic took over. Markets were close to all time highs then, and that was not sustainable anyway.
Posters with established portfolios, where are you now compared with 12 months ago? I've just checked and was pleasantly surprised to find I am almost at parity. My main take out on that is, that it was not necessary to fret over your losses compared to the point when the pandemic took over. Markets were close to all time highs then, and that was not sustainable anyway.
Im terrified to look to be honest ......
I girded my loins ........ Im 10% 61k down across two portfolios totalling around 600k
My portfolio desperately wants Golfie to be right but I'm afraid my head is leaning towards @Fortune 82nd Minute view. I'd be happy if FTSE 100 stays between 5000-6000 until such time as a vaccine is available. For all that markets are supposedly "looking 6 months ahead" they dont seem to have factored in that many of their global favourites may have suffered permanent damage. E.g. Boeing.
To be clear, I hope Golfie is right too! Will be only too happy for him to come on here and say to me "told you so" in 4 months time.
For the meantime, looks like the handcart on its way to hell is still running. Interesting article in the Times today saying markets do seem to have got a
long way ahead of events.
Optimism is all very well,
but the markets are ahead of themselves
The rally in world share markets
since the panicky low point of March 23 has been remarkable. In the space of
the four weeks to the weekend, the S&P 500, the main benchmark for Wall
Street, had risen by 29 per cent. The FTSE 100, London’s premier index, had
recovered by 16 per cent.
And this part-reversal of the dives
in the previous four weeks was during a time when the economic data and
forecasts were, if anything, getting significantly worse. The International
Monetary Fund last week predicted the worst global recession since the Great
Depression.
By the weekend the S&P 500 was
down only 15 per cent since February 21, just before western markets began to
worry seriously about the coronavirus pandemic. The FTSE 100 was down only
22 per cent from that pre-crisis point.
Risk appetite has been building.
Share traders have been keener to seize on any scrap of good news and are less
prone to being unsettled by the bad. Friday’s rally, for example, was triggered
in part by hopes of an effective treatment for the virus — all based on leaked
footage of one doctor describing rapid recoveries being made by a handful of
patients in one trial of the drug, remdesivir. Meanwhile, figures showing 22
million Americans applying for unemployment benefit in the past four weeks seem
to have been shrugged off, despite all that it may signal for future consumer
spending power and confidence.
Yesterday’s slow start in New York
suggested a slight softening in the bullishness, but it has been a remarkably
resilient performance, given the history of bear markets and the unprecedented
economic threat we face this time.
Peak to trough, the S&P 500 fell
by 49 per cent in the 2000-02 slide, as the technology bubble popped and the
9/11 atrocities soured confidence. It fell by 59 per cent in the 2007-09 dive,
as the banks imploded. It’s hard to find any economist who thinks either of
those events is as serious as the latest economic threat. Yet, for now, traders
are far less fazed by it.
Consider the 1987 crash. Markets
on each side of the Atlantic fell by about 23 per cent in that panic of 33
years ago, one that had no real explanation. In other words, equities were more
battered in 1987, when no one could find any compelling reason to worry, than
they have been in the past couple of months, when there seem to be dozens of
reasons to fret.
Wall Street, by Friday’s close,
was higher than where it was trading for most of last spring. Do analysts
really think the prospects for American business today are better than they
looked a year ago? Apparently, yes.
Of course, the S&P 500 has
certain promising features. Technology, telecoms and healthcare, sectors that
should be pretty robust in a pandemic, account for about half its weighting.
Even so, this relief rally has been eye-catching.
What explains it? Most of all, the
widespread faith that central bankers and ministers really can and will do
“whatever it takes” to mitigate the pain. UBS yesterday put the tally of all
state loans and other support unveiled across the United States and Europe in
recent weeks at $8 trillion, equivalent to all company profits over the past
two years.
Companies are showing nimbleness
and creativity in battening down the hatches, while starting to think about a
recovery. Even so, it doesn’t seem remotely unreasonable that US corporate
profits could fall by 25 per cent this year and then grow only gradually for
the next couple of years — but even on that perfectly realistic-looking
scenario, the S&P is trading now on a spicy multiple of 24 times 2020
profits. That is both considerably higher than its long-run average of 18 times
and is higher than it was before the crisis, when it was on 23 times.
Charles Dumas, an analyst at TS
Lombard, argues persuasively that valuations have gone much too high and is
expecting the S&P to sink to below the 2,000 mark this summer, well below
the March 23 nadir of 2,237. That would still be a peak-to-trough fall of only
about 40 per cent.
For present valuations to make
much sense, either company profits have to be barely affected this year, or
they have to bounce back very strongly next year. Neither scenario looks
especially likely.
Outside government, the spending
tap has slowed to a trickle. Households either can’t spend because they are in
lockdown, or won’t spend because they have taken pay cuts or fear losing their
jobs. Businesses are in cash-preservation mode, slashing all but the most
essential capital spending.
Neither is going dust off spending
plans until distancing measures and other restrictions are fully lifted
quickly. One would expect the savings ratio to soar as households stop
stockpiling loo roll and pasta and start stockpiling that other essential,
cash. The same will go for companies.
Policymakers worry about
“scarring” — the danger that firms will lose productive muscle and capacity.
They are right to do so, but even if that danger is averted, firms won’t be in
the mood to hoist spending back to pre-crisis levels. Soon we may be talking
again about the paradox of thrift: households and companies individually will
be perfectly rational to pull in their horns after this crisis, but
collectively it will slow any recovery if they do.
Even if pent-up demand does
quickly propel company profits higher again, there is still the question of who
ultimately picks up the tab. The government is heading for borrowing of £300
billion this year, the Centre for Policy Studies estimated yesterday. That’s
equivalent to more than £15,000 per UK household. If the corporate sector does
rebound with no lasting damage, it will be first in the sights of governments
desperate for tax revenues. That, too, is a headwind.
Optimism in moderation is no bad
thing, especially in a downturn. But markets do seem to have got a long way
ahead of events.
Taking an April 2019 to April 2020 view I am currently 22.4% down on base figure. Although need to move that near to 25% as the 2020 figure would have Been enhanced by around £5000 in dividends.
However, got my pension yesterday, and my 2.4% RPI increase was included. So not all bad.
Evening all. Sorry I've not been contributing lately but I luckily picked up a new engagement and have been working 14 hours a day for the last month.
Currently 21% down from a year ago on my main portfolio, 8% down on my (more passively managed) daughter's child fund. So I'm right up there with the professional fund managers, adding less than no value.
I still think we have one more leg to go down, though I'm starting to think that we may have seen the bottom for a while and that lower low will come later this year. Waiting to commit the cash I've raised on this last recovery and have been hedged for the last 500 points rise, which will hopefully pay off with this current downtrend. Looking for FTSE 5350 at least, maybe 5000 before feeding that cash back in.
55% down on my one year high. But gainfully employed and better odd than many so am content.
Blimy Athletico what’s in your portfolio, thought mine was a big hit. You must be Holding just Banks, oil and airlines.
If you hold a lot of individual shares then depending on what they are it would be quite easy to be down that amount or considerably more.
Up until around two years ago I traded quite a lot in oil shares, look at Premier Oil, Tullow, GKP etc, I can remember trading Tullow at mid £2's now less than 20p, PMO similar, can remember thinking I was a genius almost doubling my money from 50p to over £1, around 20p now.
I still have a few left of those two where I took out my initial investment and some profit and kept a small amount.
Even popular shares like Vodafone, again probably less than two years ago was buying and selling between £1.50 and £1.80 now barely over £1. Go ahead in more recent times buying and selling between £18 and £22, did drop to under £4 although back to about £12 now.
Did buy some Lloyds the other day at 28p, will duck out at 32p if they get there.
I got into Lloyds in 2009 at 23p and kept adding. But lost patience with them - fortunately just before they had to cancel the dividend. So did okay overall but no longer feel they are a good investment. The CEO was a good cost cutter but no idea how to grow the company. They'll probably finally take off now!
Have a lot of time for the bank - did a short stint their a couple of years back and have a lot of friends who work there. They look after their people better than most. Some of my friends were made redundant recently but they've now extended their leaving date to accommodate the lockdown.
Comments
Plus interest rates are at an all time low and savers have more incentive to spend as they are earning very little on savings.
There is a big pent up demand already for people to go out and spend money and enjoy themselves.
So no I don't think the markets will hit early 2020 levels for 2 years or maybe more, but I'm still confident that when the FTSE 100 (for instance) was at the 5,000 level a few weeks back that was a good buying opportunity and if it slides back there again in the next 12 months, it may be so again.
But trackers.......nah.
FWIW, my pension portfolio yesterday was down around 7% from its February high. Helps that I have 2 funds that have made double digit gains since then - Allianz Strategic Bond fund & Argonaut Absolute Return fund. Shame they make up less than 10% of my portfolio, but they have done what they were supposed to do. A couple of UK equity funds that I daren''t even work out their losses to date. One is an AIM fund and has made loads on the way up so no surprise its leaked loads on the way down.
Still overall not too shabby & my pension is still 10% higher than it was at the start of 2019.
I'm about 2% down on my all time high in my SIPP and up about 10% on my ISA's all time high prior to the pandemic. I trade quite a lot in my SIPP and had moved a fair amount into bonds and gold last year, and have done reasonably well in the last 6 weeks on some individual shares.
I'd love to say my ISA is down to my superb investment skills, but it was pure luck on timing. I cashed in the S&S into cash to switch providers when the markets were still high. Between my old and new provider they managed to royally mess it up, for some reason couldn't transfer electronically, sent cheques that got lost, then COVID hit so it ended up taking almost 9 weeks for the money to transfer. In the meantime the market was down so I reinvested at a low level.
Allianz Strategic Bond fund looks like it has performed very well. My portfolio is back in the blue, standout performer looks to be Baillie Gifford Positive Change.
@Rob7Lee Interesting about the problems of switching providers. I had the same problem when I did that for my SIPP, just before the referendum. Took AJ Bell and H-L over four weeks, and they didn't even seem to think it was something worth apologising for. This looks like another area for regulatory action.
Is it too late to move Portfolio allocation slightly more into Bonds? In this portfolio, near 100pc is in equities, mixed between International, Uk and Europe.
Is it silly to transfer funds while they're heavily down? Hope v reality.
Jupiter European is another good shout. Used it over the past 18 months for clients although not recently.
For the meantime, looks like the handcart on its way to hell is still running. Interesting article in the Times today saying markets do seem to have got a long way ahead of events.
I'll try and post it below.
Optimism is all very well, but the markets are ahead of themselves
The rally in world share markets since the panicky low point of March 23 has been remarkable. In the space of the four weeks to the weekend, the S&P 500, the main benchmark for Wall Street, had risen by 29 per cent. The FTSE 100, London’s premier index, had recovered by 16 per cent.
And this part-reversal of the dives in the previous four weeks was during a time when the economic data and forecasts were, if anything, getting significantly worse. The International Monetary Fund last week predicted the worst global recession since the Great Depression.
By the weekend the S&P 500 was down only 15 per cent since February 21, just before western markets began to worry seriously about the coronavirus pandemic. The FTSE 100 was down only 22 per cent from that pre-crisis point.
Risk appetite has been building. Share traders have been keener to seize on any scrap of good news and are less prone to being unsettled by the bad. Friday’s rally, for example, was triggered in part by hopes of an effective treatment for the virus — all based on leaked footage of one doctor describing rapid recoveries being made by a handful of patients in one trial of the drug, remdesivir. Meanwhile, figures showing 22 million Americans applying for unemployment benefit in the past four weeks seem to have been shrugged off, despite all that it may signal for future consumer spending power and confidence.
Yesterday’s slow start in New York suggested a slight softening in the bullishness, but it has been a remarkably resilient performance, given the history of bear markets and the unprecedented economic threat we face this time.
Peak to trough, the S&P 500 fell by 49 per cent in the 2000-02 slide, as the technology bubble popped and the 9/11 atrocities soured confidence. It fell by 59 per cent in the 2007-09 dive, as the banks imploded. It’s hard to find any economist who thinks either of those events is as serious as the latest economic threat. Yet, for now, traders are far less fazed by it.
Consider the 1987 crash. Markets on each side of the Atlantic fell by about 23 per cent in that panic of 33 years ago, one that had no real explanation. In other words, equities were more battered in 1987, when no one could find any compelling reason to worry, than they have been in the past couple of months, when there seem to be dozens of reasons to fret.
Wall Street, by Friday’s close, was higher than where it was trading for most of last spring. Do analysts really think the prospects for American business today are better than they looked a year ago? Apparently, yes.
Of course, the S&P 500 has certain promising features. Technology, telecoms and healthcare, sectors that should be pretty robust in a pandemic, account for about half its weighting. Even so, this relief rally has been eye-catching.
What explains it? Most of all, the widespread faith that central bankers and ministers really can and will do “whatever it takes” to mitigate the pain. UBS yesterday put the tally of all state loans and other support unveiled across the United States and Europe in recent weeks at $8 trillion, equivalent to all company profits over the past two years.
Companies are showing nimbleness and creativity in battening down the hatches, while starting to think about a recovery. Even so, it doesn’t seem remotely unreasonable that US corporate profits could fall by 25 per cent this year and then grow only gradually for the next couple of years — but even on that perfectly realistic-looking scenario, the S&P is trading now on a spicy multiple of 24 times 2020 profits. That is both considerably higher than its long-run average of 18 times and is higher than it was before the crisis, when it was on 23 times.
Charles Dumas, an analyst at TS Lombard, argues persuasively that valuations have gone much too high and is expecting the S&P to sink to below the 2,000 mark this summer, well below the March 23 nadir of 2,237. That would still be a peak-to-trough fall of only about 40 per cent.
For present valuations to make much sense, either company profits have to be barely affected this year, or they have to bounce back very strongly next year. Neither scenario looks especially likely.
Outside government, the spending tap has slowed to a trickle. Households either can’t spend because they are in lockdown, or won’t spend because they have taken pay cuts or fear losing their jobs. Businesses are in cash-preservation mode, slashing all but the most essential capital spending.
Neither is going dust off spending plans until distancing measures and other restrictions are fully lifted quickly. One would expect the savings ratio to soar as households stop stockpiling loo roll and pasta and start stockpiling that other essential, cash. The same will go for companies.
Policymakers worry about “scarring” — the danger that firms will lose productive muscle and capacity. They are right to do so, but even if that danger is averted, firms won’t be in the mood to hoist spending back to pre-crisis levels. Soon we may be talking again about the paradox of thrift: households and companies individually will be perfectly rational to pull in their horns after this crisis, but collectively it will slow any recovery if they do.
Even if pent-up demand does quickly propel company profits higher again, there is still the question of who ultimately picks up the tab. The government is heading for borrowing of £300 billion this year, the Centre for Policy Studies estimated yesterday. That’s equivalent to more than £15,000 per UK household. If the corporate sector does rebound with no lasting damage, it will be first in the sights of governments desperate for tax revenues. That, too, is a headwind.
Optimism in moderation is no bad thing, especially in a downturn. But markets do seem to have got a long way ahead of events.
Patrick Hosking is Financial Editor of The Times
Currently 21% down from a year ago on my main portfolio, 8% down on my (more passively managed) daughter's child fund. So I'm right up there with the professional fund managers, adding less than no value.
I still think we have one more leg to go down, though I'm starting to think that we may have seen the bottom for a while and that lower low will come later this year. Waiting to commit the cash I've raised on this last recovery and have been hedged for the last 500 points rise, which will hopefully pay off with this current downtrend. Looking for FTSE 5350 at least, maybe 5000 before feeding that cash back in.
Up until around two years ago I traded quite a lot in oil shares, look at Premier Oil, Tullow, GKP etc, I can remember trading Tullow at mid £2's now less than 20p, PMO similar, can remember thinking I was a genius almost doubling my money from 50p to over £1, around 20p now.
I still have a few left of those two where I took out my initial investment and some profit and kept a small amount.
Even popular shares like Vodafone, again probably less than two years ago was buying and selling between £1.50 and £1.80 now barely over £1. Go ahead in more recent times buying and selling between £18 and £22, did drop to under £4 although back to about £12 now.
Did buy some Lloyds the other day at 28p, will duck out at 32p if they get there.
Have a lot of time for the bank - did a short stint their a couple of years back and have a lot of friends who work there. They look after their people better than most. Some of my friends were made redundant recently but they've now extended their leaving date to accommodate the lockdown.