Stock market dealing

[Justin Passing]

If nothig else, assuming you go for an off-the shelf plan, at least know where it's putting the money, and what those sectors are doing at the time.
I mean for example, if you put a lump in North America- normally a standard move - a month ago, you'd regret it now at minus 20%. It could drop another 20% - there's a higher than average chance of that happening soon. It's the Trump effect, throwing everything around. It would be imho a reasonable thing to do to put your money in "money market" funds or a building society account, for a few 6 months, and see what happens to the SM.. One assumes things will settle some time!

This:

between, for example, a World Index, a European Index, and a UK index.

is still a list, just different categories.
Not a particularly good one, see below.
World index will be heavily US weighted
Even those few show awful performance at times in the past few years.
I had a small pension growing over the years in a "managed fund". When I finally got to look at it, it wasn't being managed much at all, some of its constituents had been going backwards for a year. I only got round to making a couple of adjustmentsbutthe made a decent difference.


JD's "low interest rate" in the Money Market is the same, within a close margin, as a Building Society rate:

That's Abrdn Sterling Money Market in Orange

Right now, for instance. it's not a daft place to have your money.
S&P500 is USA, it's where most of the money is!

I've been using the Blue one; that dip is the first time it has done that in years. I recently switched over, but if I hadn't I'd have still been up 30% in 18 months.
ONLY Blue and orange are not negative over the past 6 months
As it happens, gold would have seen you smiley in the past 6 months, but only because it's going up as a reaction to the main ones going down. Not so good over a longer period, it has done nothing for extended periods.
It may very well turn out that investing right now in say "world" is a lucky time and it'll jump up 20%, but you'd have to ask Mr Trump.
Bear in mind though he doesn't mind if it drops anther 20%.
I can show you more graphs to illustrate that that is NOT unlikely.

 

[Justin Passing]

I had a look at the tea leaves.
There's another drop coming this weekend.

 

[Justin Passing]

Still waiting for the rest of the drop., may be Monday/Tuesday.

#INVESTING
April, so what do do with the new 20K per person ISA allowance.???
Choices are basically
1) Trading 212 cash / S&S ISA, 4.3% (5% promo now) or so or can put into various shares and some ETFs., all free.
2) Building society account. No advantage over (1) except there may be a higher fixed rate . Basically the Blue line below.
3) Anothe broker/fund holder

No contest, for me. The rates may drop ,but the building soc rate is available as "shares", near enough, in the Money Market, regular as clockwork.
Maybe it's up to 1% different -sometimes it's higher. So a stocks and Shares account.

I've been using the same basic fund for a couple of years now. It wobbled recently when Trump disturbed the Bond market, but I think it may be back on track now.
I haven't found any bond thing which is consistently better. All those low cast trackers are nowhere close.
So this is where my wife's accounts go. It's called MAN Dynamic Income, Hedged £ Acc. Orange below. There are a few others somewhat similar, but not quite.

Trading 212 doesn't have OEICs like that unfortunately. "Investment" facilities at eg Building societies, and banks won't have it , or anything quite like it, either. I noticed the wobble before the drop, so was half out, then all out within about 1.5%.
That means using
3) Another broker/fund holder.
It doesn't matter very much, the fees on 20k aren't enormous, but you have
Hargreaves Landsdown Quite good to deal with but 0.45% fees. Free funds swaps but ETFs expensive to trade.
AJ Bell . A wider range of funds, 0,25%, cheap dealing if you swap between funds or ETFs. An excellent SCREENER here.
Interactive Investor. Flat fee site so it depends what you have there already. Less good web site, no useful screener, slow to change between funds, higher fees than AJBell.
Invest Engine Is ok if you want to use ETFs and nothing else. Then it would be the cheapest. No MAN Dyn.
Fidelity, Schwab, IB, IG, etc - no advantage for most people

What I'll be doing with Wife's accounts, which get looked at once per week or two, is use the MAN fund mentioned unless it wobbles, then I'd drop to Money Market and wait.
If things settle as in previous years, I'd look for long term performance in other areas. Maybe India, Maybe Fianancial Sector, Maybe Gold, or Japan..
Gold is too volatile unless you're watching all the time, for more than a limited percentage. It is expected to drop when the markets settle

Right now we ARE in a bit of a dip, many regions a re recovering, though the near term future depends on Trump.

To use that AJB Screener, go to advanced Filters , select Risk Rating 1,2,3,4,5,6 but not 7 and Save.
Then go to Performance>Trailing Performance. Click on 1W to show you what's going on now.