I invested money for a client just 10 days ago, and this morning I received a frantic email that one fund had lost a lot of money – it was almost like a cry for help, so this showed that I had failed in my first task.

When you invest money, it needs to be for at least 3 years minimum, because you need that amount of time to cover charges and start making money yourself. Bear in mind that values of all units will fluctuate and in the short term they may very well fluctuate down the way – so you need to keep that in mind. My client, had only invested the money and was looking at things daily, and he wanted an explanation of why a particular fund fell on the day – well ……. I told the client that he needs to look at values say once a week – and not every day, otherwise he could give himself a heart attack. Investors also need to bear in mind that when you invest money it is not like a deposit account at the bank where you check in every so often to see how much you have gained. Investments do go down as well as up – and you should almost expect this to happen with most funds/shares – that is investing. When you see adverts for investments – the Regulator always gets a statement inserted saying that the value of investments can go down as well as up, and this is an attempt to stop the expectation that they can ONLY go up.

When MAP does any investments for clients – this is why we pick a range of funds, so that we can hope that any value falls are compensated by other funds where value gains. By taking a spread of funds you are attempting to reduce the risk, and just think how bad it would be if you had all of your investments in just one fund – and that went down. Well……

This is also why MAP monitors the funds that we use, because we identify the losing ones and instead of a knee jerk reaction on getting clients out of those funds as quickly as possible, we have look over something like 2 – 3 weeks and if there is no improvement, then by all means we look to switch those investments into other funds, but we take our time to evaluate and don’t just jump in.

We don’t do a lot of research to find out the best funds for our clients only to jump out of them at the first hint of trouble.

MAP does all the background work – so that you don’t need to.

 The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice.  You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions.  Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement.  Always obtain independent professional advice for your own particular situation.  Money Advice & Planning Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.  For any enquiries, contact Andrew on 07957 836211 or enquiries@mapfinances.co.uk