A pretty picture

They say that a picture speaks a hundred words. Well what does this picture say?

To me it says stop thinking about your portfolio for a few months. The market is ugly, valuations seem almost meaningless and who knows where the bottom is. Those who moved to cash at some point in the last year are looking clever. However I don't attempt to time the market so I just have to grin and bear it.

The one consolation is that my performance is more or less in line with the market. In fact as I have a large stake in Genzyme which has proved very resilient my performance may be slightly better.

As I am not a trader this may be a good time to concentrate on home improvements and gardening and let the stock market do its thing until it settles down again. Hopefully some sort of sanity will be restored in the autumn.

This is not time to give up on the stock market. It is a great time to buy into high quality companies on a monthly basis. That way at least one of your purchases will be near the bottom and in the meantime you will be averaging down.

Tesco at 360p looks good to me and yes I am practising what I preach, buying some more every month.

Hopefully in five years I will be able to look back and think about the bargains I got in the summer of 2008!

One final point. This decade is starting to look like a poor one for investing. The market may only end up where it started. But as I do not need to sell my shares this decade that is OK. I will keep buying cheap shares and hopefully the next decade will be more rewarding!