FinTips May

  It has been a while since I had written my last article. Due to much traveling and potential new business ventures, let’s just say that time was stretched to its limits. However, I have come back to just keep you posted on the current market situation.

 When we look at the market since the beginning of the year, the one thing it has NOT been is PREDICTABLE. Everything that was predicted at the beginning of the year can be very well discarded as the world seems to be functioning on an ad-hoc system nowadays. Earth quakes, elections, economic crashes, Osama’s assassination (although I still have this deep feeling that it is a conspiracy), an almost nuclear holocaust and readjustment of prices, everything had never been predicted at any point in time. And basically what this does is that it makes the market severely VOLATILE.

 So, if you are a REGULAR INVESTOR, this is the chance to make gains simply because the prices of investment options would tend to readjust every now and then. But these gains can only be made if you were to have someone monitor your investment and buy into the investment when the price is low. If you were to make a standing instruction, you are as good as shooting a moving object with a blindfold on as you may not know if the price for that day would be a market high or low. 

 As for a ONE-TIME INVESTOR, it might be a risky venture to go into volatile investments as the price readjustment might make your money have a stunted growth. But like I have told many people, to make an individual lose all their money in regulated funds would take A LOT of effort. It may devalue their money but you would not lose all of it. However, just as how time mends all (or most) wounds, time would heal the “cut” on your investments. 

So, if you are a regular investor, get your cheque books out and get some postdated cheques ready and give them to an investment advisor who can do the job. If you are a one- time investor, you might want to reanalyze your strategy and think of becoming a regular investor as the trade off is much better.

By,

Ashveen Chakravarthy Sekaran

(B.A Actuarial Science, Statistics and Finance)

May 12^th, 2011