I’m fairly certain I have written a similar Blog to this many years ago and I think it might have been titled with the use of the word ‘Roadmap’ or something; but I can’t be too motivated to dig it out and I don’t think it will hurt one little bit to scribble out something new which might have some additional thoughts in it and certainly is in tune with the current zeitgeist.
However, I have been enthused to write this because the recent plunge in the Markets and the behaviours and activity I have witnessed on Twitter etc. have highlighted to me that so many People do not have any kind of Strategy and even less do they have a Flexible Plan that is able to adapt fairly quickly to changing circumstances. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of thinking ahead yet it is vital that you do this. The most obvious manifestation of this is that a large number of People are clearly ‘Uber Bulls’ and they in essence remain pretty much 100% Invested whatever the Markets do. This has proven to be a very profitable and wise approach for the last 12 years of a rampant Bull Market, but the idea that this will always be the case is in essence very naïve and dangerous.
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Fairly recently I caused a bit of a stir on the Tweets when I suggested that People who have regular payment plans into Funds (normally Unit Trusts – see my ‘Funds’ page for definitions of what the different types of Funds actually are), might be wise to suspend the automatic payments prior to the Coronavirus problems when it is highly likely that we could see Stockmarkets really struggling.
I got a lot of flak for this and it is very understandable why because there are maybe some advantages of such drip-feeding over time; but for me personally, I wouldn’t do this at all. But then I am perhaps a different type of Investor to many others and there is an element of ‘Horses for Courses’.
I first wrote the text in the following Blog back in September 2019 and tweeted out that I had written it but that it would be ‘parked’ in my reserve of half completed Blogs until a time when I was under pressure of having too much on, and I could pick it up and release it.
Funny enough in light of a bit of a Twitter Storm I have caused today, this actually seems highly appropriate although it is very much at the risk of chucking more petrol on the inferno !! Cheers, WD.
Needless to say if you have not read Part 1 yet then it probably makes sense to go back to that one first before you start on this one. You can find it here:
https://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/educational-blogs/how-to-hold-for-the-long-term-part-1-of-2 Anyway, I was going through various Bullet Points around the subject matter concerned and here are the next bunch:
I am bashing out this blog as a result of a conversation with a mate which was along the lines that he finds it hard to hold things for the long-term and tends to bottle it at some point and end up selling when a decent Profit has built up; but often this might not be the best approach. Even a bit of a numbskull can figure out that if you continually sell Stocks after making perhaps 40% Profit, you will never ever get gains of 200%, 300%, etc., which are the ones that really transform your overall Returns.
Buying high quality Stocks and then holding them for long time periods has many advantages and of course many drawbacks. The benefits are really around ease of execution and low activity; which of course can lead to lower Dealing Fees and costs, and effort around selecting Stocks and general Portfolio Management activity.
I often think of subject matter that is way too short to justify its own blog, yet at the same time far too long to just send out via a Tweet and also I would like to store such stuff in the Website Archives so it can be retrieved by anyone who wants it; and of course with Tweets they tend to be quite ephemeral and soon lost in the River Twitter. On the basis of that, I am envisaging that this blog will cover a few possibly unrelated subjects but at least they get captured in ‘black and white’ electron imagery for the future.
Stay in control of your Position Sizes This is something I see so often and I know I have fallen into this trap many times myself in the past. It’s a very simple concept where we buy into a Stock, and we quite like it, and we give it perhaps 4% of our Portfolio and then we leave it to do its stuff. Then it turns out that this one is a real beauty and it keeps steadily pushing higher and after a period of time we find that it has grown to be much larger and could even be up to 12% or our Portfolio or more. If we have a very focused Portfolio with maybe just 10 Holdings or something, then a Stock like this could easily grow to be 20% or more.
This Interview was previously published on Michael’s excellent ShiftingShares website and he has kindly agreed that it can sit on both our sites. He has many quality interviews on his website and make sure you pick up a copy of his FREE ebook – there is a link at the top of my ‘Weekly Performance’ page. You can find Michael’s website here:
www.shiftingshares.com I have had a link to this Interview sat on my Homepage for ages but I am quite confident a lot of Readers won’t have noticed it and that is probably even more true for people who are new to this whole WD silliness. So it seemed a good idea to create this as a Blog so it sits in the Archive and people can go back to it if they fancy another dose at any point in the future. Enjoy….WD
I am extremely grateful to Michael for providing this Guest Blog and making my life easier this week, which has also enabled me to make very good progress on the Stock blog I am working on. I am sure most Readers will already know of Michael as these days he is a huge celebrity in the Private Investing and Trading world with regular articles in Investors Chronicle and SharePad etc.
Michael has a Website and if you go to the ‘Weekly Performance’ page on WD1 you should find an image of his FREE eBook and if you click on that you will be taken to his site. The book is well worth reading and of course I am biased because I was involved in the latter stages of proof-reading and tweaking it. You can find him on Twitter as @shiftingshares. So big THANKS to Michael for letting me share this with WD Readers and I hope you all enjoy it. Cheers, WD.
A few months ago I produced a series of Checklists to be used when Buying particular kinds of Stocks and then some while later it hit me that I ought to produce one for those very high risk, often loss-making, start-up type businesses on AIM that I avoid on the whole but occasionally I will buy into one. Before getting stuck into this particular one, here are Links to the other ones I produced – in fact this is the final one but it has Links to the others:
http://wheeliedealer.weebly.com/educational-blogs/normal-portfolio-buy-checklist-quality-at-a-fair-price-buffett-stock
I have felt for some time that Readers are struggling a bit with how the WD Websites are structured and this makes it hard for them to find stuff. I have realised this from comments people make and this has driven me to try to explain it simply via a Blog so Readers can get a lot more out of the Sites. I know people dislike the layout of the Websites changing so I promise I will not change how they are structured very much and if I ever do make some significant changes, then I will try to explain them very well. At the time of scribbling this I do not foresee any such changes (to be honest it is a pain in the backside for me as well so I am in no rush to change stuff !!).
My plan is to put a Link to this Blog near the Top of the Homepages so Readers can quickly refer to it if need be and of course any new Readers should find it useful. |
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