19th June 2017

Plain English Finance: S&P 3,000 or time to sell?

In my last email I highlighted the fact that lots of market commentators are suggesting that stock markets are heavily over valued at the moment and it might be time to get out and move your investments into something more defensive.

As I have said reasonably frequently in the past, I do not claim to have a crystal ball or the ability to predict where markets are going. That said – I do think that the whole question of whether stock markets are about to endure a massive crash or not is quite an interesting one and wanted to put some thoughts down on the matter.

So let’s look at some of the arguments currently doing the rounds about why a crash is very likely. In what follows – I will use the US S&P 500 index as a proxy for shares generally. Clearly individual country indices such as the FTSE in the UK, CAC in France, DAX in Germany or Nikkei in Japan are affected by various country-specific factors but – given “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold”, looking at the S&P 500 is broadly relevant to stock market investment the world over – it will also make the article easier to read seeing as I won’t have to talk about half a dozen indices the whole way through ;-) .

Andrew Craig
Founder, Plain English Finance

Andrew Craig, Plain English Finance, Investments

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Plain English Finance: Keep Calm and Carry On?

Many people have got in touch with me in the last couple of weeks to ask if I think it is time to sell out of “riskier” assets and funds given the “risk of a massive crash”. Given this fact, I thought that I would take some time to write a quick email on the subject.

Plain English Finance: Are you Riding the Tiger’s Tail?

Regular readers will be aware of an ongoing and oft-repeated theme of mine: Namely that, to a certain degree at least, you can run you financial affairs so that you shouldn’t need to worry overly about stock market crashes (or crashes in financial markets more generally).

Plain English Finance: One resolution you can keep

One resolution you can keep. Those of you who have followed our free email for a little while might remember a moderately pretentious but entirely truthful phrase that I’m quite fond of – that “repetition is the mother of all learning”. At least this is my excuse for the fact that what follows in your first Plain English Finance email of 2017 is a gratuitous repeat of what I said in January 2016 and January 2015. As such, please find below a slightly edited and tweaked version of what I wrote last year – and it is as true in January 2017 as it was in January 2016 and every other year before that: “By this time in January, you have no doubt been bombarded with the usual blizzard of marketing and advertorial about everything from the sales in your local shops to new gym memberships via discounted holidays and faddy diets for a ‘new you’".

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