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Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

YAP – a pinch and a punch on the first of the month

1st June 2024 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

As we used to say when I was a small boy, back in another century when politicians who slept with ‘models’ resigned and stayed out of public life. Those gentler times when Russian apologists in English public life without any democratic mandate were not credited with being important enough to make public assessments of the US Justice system just because their favorite American pop idol had been found guilty of behaviour that was totally in character.

I actually mention the date because today being June 1st means we have ended May – that May of the ‘sell in May and go away’ variety.

Is this one of those years when profits ought now to have been safely banked? Of course, we can only know with hindsight in a few months’ time, but I would draw your attention to this extract from my trade press:

This focuses on only a narrow part of global equity markets, but it is the segment where most money has been made recently.

Thus the ‘sell in May’ mantra could well be applicable to some of your assets, but others may still be very fairly valued or even cheap.

My personal modus operandi is to take good profits as soon as they arise because I need money to spend from my portfolio. You may have different objectives, but there is always the risk of a ‘reversion to mean’ and the more stretched the valuation of an asset is relative to its long term ‘fair value’ average, the more painful the ‘ping’ back will be.

As it is the start of the month, I have also prepared a Deep Dive article and that will be finally edited and posted next week.

Filed Under: Markets, Opinion

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