Hi Rockster

I'm 40% cash, 40% equities, 20% commodities. Will look to increase equity exposure if FTSE falls much more. Whilst there's no 'right' answer IMO 10% equities is too low for anything other than a very short-term strategy. Many share sectors have taken quite a beating recently and may even be discounting recession - certainly they are sitting on undemanding fundamentals.

Be careful with commodities, they may outperform short-medium term but over the very long term offer wealth protection (from inflation) but not growth. Cash also will not keep up with any growth in gdp (assuming we get some!). Best cash vehicle at the moment is probably govmnt index-linked savings certs.

rgds
p12

I'd say being a doommonger and investing 40% in commodities is absolute madness! If I was a doommonger, I'd spread my assets or be in treasuries (if I was betting on apocalypse)!

I'm 100% cash but there again I always have been - I like to sleep at night and I'm quite content with my 6.5% each year because its guaranteed.

I manage the families portfolio of £1/2m
£15k shares, £50k fxd int, the rest in cash with building societies not more than£35k in each.
Despite the bounce today 29/3 I suspect more bad news to come
from the usa
At my advice centre we are seeing huge numbers of personal debt cases and now mortgage arrears...the Bof E this useless government haven't got a clue!! what is going on in the 'real world'!


take care
john

What is the point in holding 1.5% in shares may I ask?

If you're bearish enough to go 98% cash and claim to be an investment manager, why no short positions?

You're also leaving yourself exposed to inflation risk and GBP currency risk, both of which are very substantial right now.

I have no problem with people choosing to be risk averse, but if you're going to be risk averse, I'd think about covering more bases.

And as any experienced professional money manager should know , the important point on the important cycles is always when people stop concentrating on the advantages of being right and start concentrating on the costs of being wrong.

So what do you suggest Paul D?

I'm long commodities. Short Dollar, short pound and Short Bunds.

I've also got a load of cash waiting for better opportunities.

I do not own any UK Property.

I would generally characterise my investment style as agressive.

If I was shorting for the longer term, I'd go long USD and long Yen.

You're right, the dollar will climb one day, and climb spectacularly, but not today, and possibly not even this decade.

Remember the dollar is still being kept artificially high by the Chinese, the pegged oil producing nations, and even the Japanese (who could liquidate their positions) - this does leave big further potential downside.

The Euro's potential downside is probably concentrated on Italy's level of national debt, which makes the country about as solvent as Northern Rock.

I think dollar-euro is the world's greatest momentum trade. It swings like a 10 year pendulum, and once its got momentum the small nations just reinforce the move with their reserve weightings.

six months peformance on the following has been better than I would hope for:
-short property
-short sterling
-long euro
100% cash

why? because I believe House Price Crash will bring stock markets falls - I will go heavily into shares then

USA and UK are deeply out of control (UK worst) with indebtedness and lack of vision of their place in the world - lack of trading ability - made hugely worse by aging population expectations/needs
sleep soundly, but thinking of change.

We are in a quandary. Should we cash in our shares in ISAs and invest elsewhere? Where is elsewhere? Any suggestions will be taken seriously. The performance is not quite as I had expected. We have only been investing for 8 years should we hold out? Value about 22k

pauline
If as the chancellor suggests we are in a comparable economic situation to 60 years ago then it might be a good idea to move some equity ISAs to Fixed Interest/gilts ISA to a supplier like Legal and General...or your present ISA provider may provide similar scheme...As the market could crash at anytime and stay low for a prolonged period if unemployment takes hold.
Presumably you have your full cash ISA allowance this year.
IT is always best to drip feed money into the market into say a Global Investment Trust...£50-100 pm...
ISA equity scheme charges can sometime be quite high thereby negating the effect of dividend reinvestment.

Time in the market is more important than timing the market.

Very profound, but exactly what do you suggest Pauline does ???

Don't cash out of shares, obviously!

My current asset allocation (excluding my house) is roughly:

Gold bullion: 75%.
Silver bullion: 5%.
Mixed shares: 15%.
Property: 0%.
Bonds: 0%.
Cash: 5%.

But I think that my position is too agressively weighted towards precious metals and such a high bullion exposure is too volatile for most investors.

I'm heavy on metals because I think that gold and especially silver are terribly undervalued. People don't (yet) realise the safe haven that they're going to NEED in coming years.

I'm light on shares because shares are in a long-term bear market that has a few more years to run. Shares are below fair value, but that doesn't mean they won't get even cheaper (in P/E and yield terms) as this bear progreesses.

I'm light on cash and bonds because even after interest is added, inflation is substantially eroding buying power.

I'm out of BTL property because house prices relative to people's earnings have a long way to come down.

A long-term "model" portfolio for what I'd consider to be steady and satisfactory returns would probably benefit from the following allocation:

Shares: 40%
Property: 20%
Gold: 20%
Government bonds: 20%

The dilemma for putting together my model portfolio comes because different asset cl$%^& keep moving in-and-out of favour, so spending 40% of monies on shares at a market peak would actually be equivalent to having just 25% in shares, once the market drops.
Since the mid-1990's, I have been trying to build my model portfolio, but back then, I was overweight on property and I didn't want to buy gold because it seemed pointless buying something that was heading down, just for the sake of "diversification" (gold subsequently dropped from about $450 to $250 over about five years).
But by the time gold was at bargain prices in 2000, shares were far too expensive to hold onto. So I went underweight shares, overweight property and steadily bought gold.
Then property looked precarious in mid-2006, so I then went grossly overweight gold with proceeds from BTL.

I am not at all advocating my model portfolio, but that's roughly how I hope to have my assets allocated some day.
But I suspect that I'll keep shifting around various asset cl$%^& and never buy the one's that I think will trend down, so I'll never be truly "diversified".

FB

If we're talking about 20K or more, I would think that an independent financial advisor would be happy to book an appointment with you, to determine your needs.


I just had a mooch around and found an interesting fund......

The money manager "Fidelity" offer a fund;
"Fidelity Multi Asset Strategic Fund"

Objective:
"...The fund aims to provide moderate long-term capital growth by investing in a range of global assets providing exposure to bonds, equities, commodities, property and cash......
It spreads your money across five different types of investment – Bonds, Shares, Cash, Commodities and Property Companies...."

There may be similar funds out there that meet your requirements for a balanced and diversified portfolio.
I don't use money managers - I make the decisions myself - but Fidelity have a reasonable reputation.

Link to Fidelity's page:
http://www.fidelity.co.uk/direct/researc...

But exiting one fund and paying initial setup fees on another, is going to cost. It might be like jumping form the frying pan and into the fire.

FB

As private investors we can act fast, certainly in plenty of time to avoid this meltdown. So I see no point in having assets except shares, since they always outperform. Even now, you can get high yields from some decent US energy companies, like Buffett owns. This bust confirms that asset diversification is a fallacy - one down all down. Just gilts or shares for me.

It's been interesting reading posts from 7 months ago with predictions - most of which were wrong.

40% in commodities! Jeez, I bet that's hurting now.

I said long dollar and long yen, both if which would have paid off.

I was at a seminar where an economist said the past will never repeat itself because you have to go through exact same steps as the last time to repeat historiy - this will never happen because people learn from their mistakes, even if you make new ones! Also, he suggested that the first place to benefit from thedownturn will be property because people will only trust hard assets.