Been there done that, stock market crashes, currency crashes and exchange rate crashes, I have lost a shitload in the last couple of weeks, funnily enough, my nett is now back to what is was in april.

The UK FTSE has never risen above what it was at its high back in dec 1999, well it has, but it keeps being driven back to the 7000 level, I blame automation and chartists.

Sell everything and buy tulips and magic beans.

The trustees of my/our family trust use the same tactics, frightened me to death as I had images of the farm and the business concerns etc being sacrificed as an aftermath action on a financial altar of offerings.

They made a killing and have done so yet again on other occasions, fire clearance sale buying spree is worth the risk.

Depends where you are on lifes highway, the stockmarket probably isnt for widows and orphans.

I have never sold anything or cashed in, I might sell some stocks and reinvest in others.

Looking at my portfolio, its actually almost 33% higher in the last 10 years, taking into account the latest downturn.

Brunner and Bankers IT are still higher, Scottish Morg and Croda took at hit, but are still higher than what I paid for them.

Goes back to the age old question, what do you want, capital growth or regular income?

Actually at this moment I have about 10 grand in dividends stuck in a stockbroker account, what to buy, descions descions.

I'm struggling to make sense of that.

Do you mean that it's peak value was 33% higher than now (i.e. it's fallen 25% from the peak)? Or do you mean it's gained only 33% over 10 years?

Neither seems particularly likely.

This thread was started in October and here we are in December and things are arguably much worse now than they were back then. When I think of a crash I think of a speeding train coming to an abrupt halt and then breaking into small pieces, the current picture more resembles a speeding train that is slowing with small pieces constantly falling off, the time scale is different but the end result is the same, a pile of small broken pieces.

On reflection I'm very pleased I got out of the market with my voluntary investments when I did, the decision to buy a UK flat and rent it out has more than compensated for any loss of income caused by a falling Pound. I'm also happy that some of my income is in USD because this has the same compensatory effect. And lastly, I'm super happy that I made the decision years ago to transfer funds into Thailand and accumulate Baht rather than Pounds or anything else, all that TVF nonsense about not transferring funds into Thailand and the safety of Thai banks is probably the worst piece of expat advice I've ever heard. As for the SIPP investments: I've taken Fletch's earlier advice and not done anything, in fact I rarely look, I'm not sure the old ticker would stand it!

For every looser there's a winner somewhere, one of them is Thailand....here's what Bloomberg has to say:

- Thailand has posted current-account surpluses every month since the end of September 2014. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the third-quarter balance of 7.7 percent is among the highest in Asia and compares with Taiwan’s 13 percent.

- Customs exports also posted gains every months but two in 2017 and 2018, supporting demand for the Thai currency. Despite some signs of a slowdown, the tourism sector remains a major driver. Exports of goods and services account for about two-thirds of Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.

- Foreign reserves are at about $203 billion, more than twice the amount the International Monetary Fund deems as adequate.

- Speculation that the Bank of Thailand next week will deliver its first interest-rate increase since 2011 has also bolstered the baht; the central bank’s monetary policy committee discussed "conditions and appropriate timing to begin normalizing monetary policy in the future," according to the minutes of the Nov. 14 rate decision.


There's nothing new in the above that hasn't been repeated publically many many times over the past couple of years, trying to get expats/westerners to believe it however is a different matter entirely!

www.bloomberg.com/asia

Yes, I think Thailand is a decent play to have some assets. I don't focus too much on the currency rate, as I hold a significant proportion of assets here and in THB.

The Thai equity market has been a bit frustrating and disappointing this year. SET is down around 8%.

Domestically it hasn't done much wrong, even the politics, and the likelihood of next year's election going reasonably OK.

Unfortunately they've just got dragged down with other global and EM markets, somewhat indiscriminately in my view. Some key reasons for that:

1) As global risks increase for whatever reason, eg Brexit, Trump, China, people just take money out of "risk" assets. A narrow minded view to an extent unless you think it really is going to lead to global systemic damage. Narrow minded in my opinion as pockets of value like Thailand can actually diversify the risk

2) Situations often get made much worse than they are by the media. They often just want to make stories that sell and bad news sells better than good. I watch Bloomberg TV every day in the background while doing other things. It's often as though they pull anyone the minute they start talking positively on a subject the media are trying to make it negative.

3) Some of it is also ignorance. Investors, media etc, simply don't really have a good handle on Thailand today. They just have a stereotype image of days gone by and the financial crisis.
One of the most annoying TV anchors with respect to EM and Thailand is Tom Keene on Bloomberg. The old geezer with the bow Thai. Generally, he can be quite entertaining sometimes, and obviously has some knowledge and a long history in markets. However he understands f*** all about Thailand. So often he mentions it and says things like will we get a repeat of 1997, is Thailand going to fall over again, contagion, domino effect blah blah blah
If he actually bothered reading some of his colleagues intelligent articles on Bloomberg he'd realise Thailand is a very different place today.
Articles like the ones above show that.
Bloombers articles are generally quite good. The TV channel more variable in quality as they are often striving to "find a story", but Tom Keen is just plain annoying and on Thaland

So all in all while Thailand has potential, unfortunately the market is "always right" even when you know its wrong I think it was Buffet coined the phrase of markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, in terms of trying to fight it. In recent years we've had "don't fight the Fed" etc

Rather than automatically seeing yourself as wrong when a trade/ investment doesn't work a better way to think of it sometimes is just you're on the wrong side at the market at that point in time. You could well have got it wrong of course, but it could be that everything you think is correct, just the much vaster market is moving in a different direction. Markets often overshoot as well as having timing differences to reality.

So my view: Thailand looks good. When it picks up/ that value gets recognised is always hard to time and call. Best thing is just ride it all out and in the long run, reality and fundamentals win out long term if you look at annualised returns