ftse 100 future prediction

Hi everyone,
I have £70,000 invested in a bond linked for 3.5 years to the ftse 100.
What thoughts about it's future rise ( or fall ) over this period do you have?
I would be very interested in your comments.
Thanx,
Mr Wayne Doherty

Hi Wayne, Welcome to t2win. You will find most contributors to this site are short term traders ie. day traders holding for seconds to hours, to swing traders holding positions for a few days.

With trading it is impossible and in my view bad for your bank balance to form any opinions as to market direction as you don't argue with the market, its best to trade with the current trend on a daily basis.

Nobody can tell you what the ftse will do next week never mind in three years time the only consolation you have is that history is on your side to the upside.

Good luck with your investment.

Wayne has a bond linked to the FTSE Index (of shares). Is history really on his side to the upside?

Well if it's James Bond he'll be fine

Seriously - There ain't no easy answer m8 - when you got in you took the risk like everyone else.

Thanks Tony ! Welcome back by the way I observed your spat with interest and kept a discreet silence !

I admit to knowing nothing about Bonds, except 007 do they move in the opposite direction to stocks?

There is an inverse relationship, but it's not fixed. If one is doing well, the other is generally, though not always, not.

For a very basic explanation of the difference:-

http://www.msfinancialsavvy.com/arch...onddiffer.html

If Wayne has a bond linked to the FTSE-100 I imagine he has found someone who is guaranteeing him his £70K back in 3.5 years time and presumably an above average annual return on his investment in the interim.

Given the inflated valuations of stocks in general and low yields obtainable in the form of dividends, stocks are unlikely to provide decent real returns over the next 5 years or so. Careful analysis shows that the bulk of increased profits reported during the last 3 years are an illusion or due to cost cutting; sooner or later there are no longer any jobs to cut what happens then? Are Barclays, HBOS, Vodafone, GlaxoSmithkline etc. making more money than they made 3 years ago? Are their shareholders better off than they were in 2000? NO.

It is very easy for people to blame terrorism or the dot com debacle for a fall in market returns but that has nothing to do with a fall in returns for the likes of Marks & Spencer, Vodafone, Sainsburys or LloydsTSB. Management sat still and believed that they could do nothing but the companies would continue to grow, never mind customer loyalty, better products/service, innovation etc. Some managers got so stupid it was almost criminal, look at the value destruction at Cable & Wireless, Vodafone, GlaxoSmithkline, BTR (now known as Invensys) etc.; bad managements have cost the shareholders a packet and that money is unlikely to be recovered. Why would anyone buy a business that grows at 20% per annum for a 100 times earnings or consider paying 5 times net assets for an asset based company?

The days of indiscriminate buying and holding as practised by the average fund manager are gone, only the adept stock pickers will make decent returns for their investors over the next 3 to 5 years and as such, those that have large sums to invest will have to look carefully before investing their nest eggs.

Perhaps you should have asked this question before you invested?