Bite the bullet

Monday was almost as bad as I expected. The UK opened fairly well so I put off dumping my shares. Mistake. I took a hit, not terrible but bad enough. I started selling when the US market showed that Monday was definitely going to be a follow through from Friday's dive. If I had been quick enough in selling I would have lost nothing on my US shares but I left it a few minutes too long so a couple of hundred pounds disappeared before all the shares were gone. Not as bad as the loss on UK shares that was around seven hundred.

My holding of US shares has been hit by the strength of the pound and the weakness of the dollar which exaggerated the weakness of my selection.

The American shares I picked under-performed the market. This was true of the UK holdings too. All in all a miserable campaign. But its better to take losses when prospects are poor rather than hold on when a big pullback is on the cards. It is a really wicked market for making money because of the repeated pull backs from all time highs and repeated assaults on those highs.

And behind it all the threat of the withdrawal of quantitative easing. If the policy is all about strengthening banks' balance sheets I would guess it is working well. But devil take the hinder-most.