Investing time horizon

Investing and Markets 📈
1

I’m wondering what time horizon current and future Freetraders invest for? I’m saving for retirement mostly, so my time horizon > 20 years, but it would be interesting to hear what sort of goals other freetraders are saving for.

  • More than 20 years
  • More than 10 years
  • More than 5 years
  • Years
  • Months
  • I’m not investing, I’m trading to make money
  • Not really sure

0 voters

And how long do you typically hold an investment for (or anticipate holding one for if you have just started investing)?

  • More than 20 years
  • More than 10 years
  • More than 5 years
  • Years
  • Months
  • Weeks
  • Days
  • Hours

0 voters

3 Likes
2

Try to answer both questions honestly if you can - I think in some ways the second question is the most interesting one, esp when compared with your response in the first. For me at least my behaviour doesn’t match my ambitions, and I probably trade too often (discounting trades to test out free trade which have been daily :slight_smile: )

3

The ETFs I’m planning to hold onto for 10 years+, some of the shares I plan on keeping long term but others are just a ‘let’s see how this does’ at the moment

2 Likes
4

My portfolio is for my returement for sure. We’ll see exactly how that pans out though. As for how long I hold onto my investment for, I’ve answered 5+ years but I may well get TBS (Twitchy-Bum-Syndrome) before that :man_shrugging:

2 Likes
5

Going to build up my other investment over the next 20 something years and invest fairly short-medium term with free trade to scratch the itch

1 Like
6

Some interesting results here so far - most people seem to be saving for retirement (or at least a very long time horizon), and yet keep investments for far shorter periods of time (years), rather than investing and holding on to their purchases through the ups and downs of the market.

It would be really interesting to find out from anonymised stats what the most profitable investment strategies turn out to be, and whether there are certain common mistakes people make (selling during a crash, buying/selling too often, holding things for too short a time or too long).

2 Likes
7

I think there is done a lot of research on this already, and it is clearly proven that people are they own worst enemy when it comes to investment. I remember hearing that even in on mutual fund people constantly performed worse than the actual mutual fund they had their money invested in because people kept selling and buying at all the wrong times. And the people who performed the best was the people who had died and the second best was the people who had forgotten that they had money in the fund.

4 Likes
8

Freetrade will be in an excellent position to provide more data on this once their user base is big enough.

10

Well sure answering questions about a 20 year time horizon would take… 20 years (here’s hoping freetrade are around that long!), but there are lots of other interesting questions on retail investor behaviour that wouldn’t. It’d probably make very good content marketing for freetrade.

Thanks for the link @kimaage.

11

My overall strategy is for longer term 20+ years, I will hold onto most investment last and reinvest the dividend, although I will also buy and sell if the price seems right or we have a random spike in one of my stocks

1 Like
12

I once heard a quote which perfectly describes this

“Time in the market, beats timing the market”

2 Likes