Five investments to start your portfolio

FIRE v London1 Comment

I came across an excellent article recently in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald – Five simple trades to get you started with share investment – and found myself lamenting that such clear, wise guidance isn’t commonly seen in the UK press.

The best time to start investing is always today.  Especially when the stock market (sorry, share market, in Australia) is offering lower prices than for many years previously.

The specific suggestions for Australians aren’t quite going to work for most Brits, Americans or continental Europeans however.  Here are my tweaks for those of us in the northern hemisphere: Continue reading “Five investments to start your portfolio” →

Housing, pt 9: three sets of bad news

FIRE v London9 Comments

In the ongoing saga which is my attempt to raise an absurd amount of cash to buy a few hundred square meters of Dream Home in London, I have had three bits of bad news this week.

At the start of last week I thought that I had pretty much sold everything I needed to sell.  I’d only just become a ‘forced seller’, which saw me liquidating for example some FTSE-100 stocks at a FTSE of around 5900 – around 5% below the level I entered this process at.  I had three things to do: collect cash from assorted bank accounts, confirm my margin loan, and sell one particular asset.

Continue reading “Housing, pt 9: three sets of bad news” →

Stock market bloodbath?

FIRE v London1 Comment

I’ve been paying close attention to equity markets over recent weeks, as I rebalance my portfolio to help me to buy a house.  I’m struck by how badly numerous stocks have done since their 2015 highs.

The major markets overall are essentially flat on a year ago (UK down 1%, US up 1%, Australia up 3%).

But calling 2015 flat ignores the fact that during the year we were treated to some significant gains, before sharp drops in August and December.  FTSE-100 breached 7100 (now at 5960), S&P got to 2130 (now 1923), ASX-200 rose 10% to almost 6000 (now 4925) and DAX reached 12,400 (now 10,000). Overall then the markets are 15-20% down from their peak. This decline is between a third and half of the declines experienced in 1987, 2000-2 and 2008-9 (the UK copped it worst in 2000 and the US’s worst bath was 2008-9).

Continue reading “Stock market bloodbath?” →