Panic selling

Spot on, and a point Iā€™ve made in a previous thread.

I am not grafting hard and hoping to put away potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds to end up being skint at 55 years old, with that mind set I may as well keep cash under my mattress.

Diversify enough, and the potential to lose it all is practically zero in the long term.

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Itā€™s better to be in stocks than in a savings account right now thatā€™s for sure. The interest rates are crap and could turn negative somewhen.

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I think a more appropriate adage would be, invest only what you donā€™t need to use (in the short term).

Itā€™s not quite as eloquent thoughā€¦

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Weā€™re in the same boat :grin:

Well said. Thank you.

I havenā€™t panic soldā€¦ But Iā€™ve literally sold everything other than a few Ā£K of shares in FB, MSFT, AAPL, GOOGL and OKTA. Iā€™ve kept a single share of the iShares US tech stock (so I remain conscious of what itā€™s upto) and Iā€™ve also bought iShares physical gold which is around 20% of my portfolio (safe haven option). The rest is sitting as cash because I think this bull run is indeed crazyā€¦

I believe there will be more bargains to pick up when the dismal q2 results send the market crashing again.

After that Iā€™m gonna sit on my hands.

If Iā€™m wrong, then so be itā€¦ Iā€™ll have lost a bit of opportunity to make some gains in the next few monthsā€¦ Wonā€™t lose sleep over that.

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You say you didnā€™t panicā€¦then proceed to enumerate your exact strategy while panicking (flight to safety)ā€¦

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I guess it all depends on your definition of panicā€¦

He technically didnā€™t panic. He calmly and thoughtfully liquidated almost his entire portfolio into cash and gold.

The mental gymnastics in this are laughable.

That is the very definition of panic: Liquidating positions not because of a change in your investment thesis or fundamentals, but because you suddenly fear losing in the immediate future on these positions.

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Although, they didnā€™t necessarily make a bad decision, I agree itā€™s technically a panic sale.

In they same way that when we had a run on the shops in the past few weeks. We called it panic buying, but most individuals were acting in a way that was rational to them, ā€œstocking upā€.

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I was relatively calm. Concerned might be a better description of my demeanor during the process.

Regardless, I still feel it is the right strategy to wait for q2 results as that is where I think weā€™ll get a better picture of the damage that has been done.

Iā€™m just not convinced that the stock market can ā€œprice in the recoveryā€ (as I keep hearing) when it hasnā€™t bothered to properly ā€œprice in the costā€ yet.

I didnā€™t mean it offensively, only in a very technical sense from an investment standpoint. Even then it could well be a wise decision. History is decided by the victor.

I fully agree this recovery seems almost fantastical. If I was to pluck a number from the air I would say that we are only about 15% through this crisis.

Imo I donā€™t think the market is ignoring this, I thinks its a mixture of investors looking out to the very long-term and that the market hasnā€™t actually recovered. The market went up because the value of cash went down. The damage has been shifted to our wallets.

No telling whatā€™s going to happenā€¦ so I just keep buying :sweat_smile:

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So I think weā€™ve agreed we need to place @Kierzy under intense psychometric testing to establish whether he was panicked/anxious/concerned/slightly hungry whilst he was selling his shares.

Whether or not this becomes a good strategy we will evaluate afterwards using retrospectosopy and a high dose of confirmation bias. Studies regarding caffeine consumption, anxiety and investing returns are sure to follow.

Forget vaccines lads I think we are on to something here

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Do we need a sister thread on panic buying?

Hahahaā€¦ Iā€™m not offended really. I was actually just trying to answer the OPs question but loads of tangents in this conversation.

Iā€™m pretty messed up in the head so any free psyche evaluations would be welcome.

Panic selling is, IMHO, something that happens if you sell at the bottom of a curve having made a loss, because youā€™re fearing further losses. I sold before the market took a turn as my partner told me that supermarket runs had started in Singapore (she works at a multinational bank). She said I should consider selling if it looks like itā€™s going to go globalā€¦ I just got lucky really.

Youā€™re quite vociferous about telling people theyā€™re wrongā€¦ youā€™ve done that twice in just this one thread.

Maybe analyse your language a bit. It will greatly help your career going forward if you can influence and teach people without putting them down in the process.

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Your tone isnā€™t exactly welcoming for new forum members - check out the community rules if you havenā€™t already.:+1:t3:

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