Storm in a Teacup?
Well, the unthinkable happened and the UK voted to leave the European Union. I am personally extremely upset and haven’t really been able to focus since Friday (you can tell by the lack of blog posts).
I think this is terrible for the UK, bad for the EU, and bad for the world. I’m really disappointed with the UK government, the Leave campaigners, and the voters.
However, for long-term investors I don’t think there is much to worry about. Since the announcement I have bought some ETFs and watched my portfolio sink by a large amount of (paper? imaginary?) money. I’m not really planning to do anything else.
As we often say around here, you don’t make or lose money until you sell. Don’t sell because of Brexit. Don’t sell because you think something is going to happen on Friday. Keep following your plan (you do have a plan, right?).
For me, the plan is to continue buying diversified stocks and ETFs and reinvest the dividends. It’s getting easier and easier to ignore the noise, especially since I decided not to sell things.
Not selling is not an optimal strategy, but it takes a lot of the stress out of investing for me. I just have to figure out what to buy every couple of months, which is much easier than trying to decide if something should be sold or not.
How are you doing? Did you liquidate everything on Thursday night and move into gold?
Briefly considered trying to be Gekko-like and actively look for solely UK-exposed funds, then realised that trying for one afternoon to do the opposite of what I normally do (and don’t yet have anywhere near an adequate understanding of) would be liable to burn big holes in my pockets. So instead I just bought more of what I was buying before. And immediately saw the price drop by 8% But I’m pretty sure it’ll work out :o)
Ha ha. Being an ace trader is very appealing, isn’t it? Every time I have done that I have ended up regretting it 🙂
I suspect the UK market is going to drop even more once the new relationship with Europe is worked out…
Tried to find great bargains over the weekend, but then decided to not do anything at all and let the market do its thing.
Massive drop in portfolio value, and thankfully it is time to dollar cost average down soon, which means more for less =)
Sorry to hear about how you are going to be affected in the future though!
Hi Desmond
It’s not really going to affect me personally, it’s more like the death of an ideal…
Might lead to a new adventure though -Japanese citizenship 🙂
Yup, I’ve regretted pretty much every single individual stock purchase/sale I’ve made, it’s not been worth it for me. I like that with index investment, I not only have the statistics with me, I actually beat the average investor, because the average investor does not perform as well as the market!
I suspect I will end up focused solely on ETFs when I finally learn my lesson in the future.
For now the dividend yields on some stocks are too tempting!
“the voters” surely you mean: those who protest voted, regretted their vote once they saw the consequences, did not realize the vote was real, thought their vote didn’t count, and those too apathetic and\or lazy to vote.
I can’t fault and person or group of people who democratically voted for something, but this vote was just sad and the number of people who threw their vote away or did not take this serious is just staggering.
The voters as a whole. Still haven’t seen any good reasons to vote leave, but 52% went for it…
Really sad about the whole thing.
I was buying pounds for my summer trip home with a tear in my eye as I watched the outcome of the referendum and the crash of stirling live.
Absolutely! It’s a great time to spend yen 🙂