Pottering About
I write this in a very warm room, with outside temperatures around 30 degrees. Summer has arrived in Lithuania! Gardens are running away with growth after a wet Spring and the swimming lakes are busy at weekends.
Selling in May ahead of going away would not however have been sensible this year – a new cliché for selling in October would have been a useful guide!
In my experience, stock markets usually become listless in the months of July and August and barring new major global events that impact on economics and finance – which are more likely to be negative than positve anyway – it is very hard to take tactical decisions with any confidence.
In essence, I think of these months as a ‘do nothing’ period (apart from keeping a weather eye open). In fact, when building my client review calendar as an IFA, I scheduled hardly any meetings in these months, only partly because I myself wanted to take a holiday, of course, and I can never recall anyone objecting!
Clearly when markets have headed down for several months and the underlying conditions are not offering any obvious reasons to expect a return to a bull market, selling quality investments would only serve to supply bargains to others. This is one of those times when a shrewd investor lives on their reserved deposit funds or other income sources and leaves their portfolio well alone. But human psychology is not so easily managed……
