Advice For Investors
May 19th, 2011 | 
Author: Advice For Investors
Imagine you are in an aeroplane on a long distance flight to the other side of the world. There you are drink in hand cruising along at high altitude nice and smoothly the engines humming quietly watching an entertaining inflight movie and with scarcely a care in the world.
Suddenly and with little warning the aeroplane encounters terrible turbulence. It rocks and bumps then rapidly plunges a few thousand feet to find calmer currents while distress and panic sets in as passengers and crew fret about what fate might have in store.
What do you do? Well one thing you dont do is jump out of the plane! You fasten your seatbelt brace yourself and hope and pray that it will all be shortlived and that calm will soon be restored.
It is an analogy that has some resonance in the midst of the current turmoil in the global financial systems and the way people are reacting to it. For a few years now the markets have been calm showing steady growth and delivering good returns to investors. Now there is instability as they react to the tumultuous effect of the credit crunch on global financial systems.
The history of financial markets however has consistently shown that falls have always been followed by recoveries and that a calm and measured longterm view on investment has always been the best stance to take whatever the circumstances. When the credit crunch and the fallout from it has become a thing of the past those investors who did not panic or capitulate will be the ones who benefit.
So how has all of this come about? Well the credit crunch is a reduction in the availability of loans which has been caused by a long period of relaxed and inappropriate lending leading to bad debts and losses. It started in the USA with the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis where loans were made to large numbers of people who defaulted when interest rates rose and repayment costs escalated. As a result major American subprime lenders filed for bankruptcy.
All of this has knocked the markets created uncertainty and clouded the shortterm outlook. Banks have lost confidence in lending while individual and corporate investors have lost confidence generally. Governments including our own have had to step in with massive and unprecedented bailout initiatives to shore up the banks and try to restore some semblance of order. On top of that fears of recession in Western economies have compounded the situation.
Unquestionably all this has provided a very stiff examination of the resilience of investors. However investors should try very hard not to be disconcerted by shortterm fluctuations and to regard investments as longterm commitments. That is not to minimise the current turmoil in the global markets the like of which we have not seen for a very long time.
The fact is though that markets are notoriously difficult to predict as they have always tended to react sometimes irrationally to economic news and can be influenced one way or another by excitement or mass panic. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 probably the most devastating of them all came at the end of the socalled Roaring Twenties an era noted as a time of prosperity and excess.
The stock market collapse of 1973/74 was one of the worst stock market downturns in modern history while Black Monday in 1987 saw huge values being shed in a short period. The birth of the internet and ecommerce technologies in the 1990s led eventually to the Dotcom bubble burst of 2000. In all cases the markets recovered.
And while volatility like the latest bout of turbulence has always been a feature of markets across the globe equities historically have always had the ability to deliver inflation beating returns. Indeed history is firmly on the side of the wise investor who looks at the long term value of equities.
For those bold enough to take them short term market volatility presents sound medium to long term investment opportunities but be warned this is no time for the inexperienced individual to be diving headlong into the markets thinking this is the moment to invest. Instead it is the moment when individuals should be seeking specialist reliable financial advice along with investment products and fund managers you can trust.
The world is so uncertain that no one can make decisions based on shortterm conditions. No one knows if and when the market has reached its low point and unless you believe you are likely to be lucky the best advice is to remain invested over the medium to long term. Delaying investing when the market has fallen is a natural instinct but experience shows that when a falling market turns it tends to do so sharply.
Trying to enter and exit the market at the right time therefore is almost impossible because not even the most experienced investment manager knows with any certainty when is the best time to invest in the market. Your time in the market is the most important aspect of investment not timing the market. And in a medium to long term strategy the only prices that matter are the ones you buy and sell at. However awful it all may look try to ignore what is going on in between.
For many investors regular saving as part of a longterm investment strategy offers a flexible affordable solution. Some wealth should be kept liquid in a deposit account or somewhere that can easily be turned into cash without losing value so that investors are not forced into cashing in investments during bad periods of market uncertainty like these.
Additionally with all the shortterm uncertainty investors should always be thinking of diversifying spreading capital over different types of investment with varying characteristics. Your money should be in the hands of different investment managers and the best ones you can find who will be selecting from a variety of countries sectors and shares to spread your risk widely.
But remember unless you really are a highly experienced investor there is absolutely no substitute for professional wealth management advice from a specialist adviser who even in difficult market conditions will be focussed on the longer term objective of aiming to deliver superior returns for all investors.
About the writer: Jenny Austin is an expert in Self Build Mortgages for further information on how to choose your Equity Release Mortgages please visit http://www.ownbuild.co.uk/selfbuild.htm.
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