Update Sept 26

Hello all

It’s been a while since I posted – mainly because I have been busy on two new editions of my books, namely:

Online Investing

Teach Yourself Share Investing

The titles have been changed slightly to broaden the scope as I felt investors of today are more adventurous than in the past.

The new Online Investing is now available but TY is still in the editorial stage and should be available toward the end of the year.

Both existing editions were about 5 years old, and when I started re-writing them, I was surprised to realise how much had changed, so the new eds are really quite different from the older versions. I have tried to simplify them and have deleted anything I felt wasn’t really relevant to share investors of today.

As I write, for the last few weeks the market has been very volatile and in a downtrend and has lost all the gains of the previous 12 months. This has been mainly due to a guy called Trump who has been throwing his weight around believing he is the new king of the world and can do anything he likes. He started a senseless war with Iran, believing he could easily subdue them into accepting his conditions but guess what: they refused to be bullied and the war has been dragging on with no end in sight. The only result has been a major disruption to world oil supplies which has caused fuel costs to spiral and has added to Australia’s rate of inflation, which in turn causes an increase in interest rates and added pain for most of us.

As share investors what should we do about it?

Well I think all we can do is not panic and sit tight. It’s especially important to hold solid shares that pay a good dividend (preferably with a high level of franking) so the dividend income provides a hedge against lower share prices. There’s no doubt in my mind that the market will recover eventually and head off to new highs.

The only question is: when?

In the worst case scenario the US will elect a new president when the time comes and some sanity will return to the world. In the meantime – sit tight; I believe shares are still the best vehicle for growing your nest egg and ensuring future prosperity.