Worst quarter ever for the portfolio. The whole market fell hard.
I didn’t sell anything. By the time I considered it a lot of damage had already been, by which time I knew physiologically selling was the worst thing I could do. One of the podcasts I regularly listen to said repeatedly at the time that markets weren’t pricing in what was coming out of China and Italy. Hearing and listening are very different things.
I did throw in everything I had left at pretty much the bottom, but being already almost fully invested as the pandemic hit it wasn’t much. It was a hard watch and stopped looking to be honest and focussed on the day job.
It was velocity of the fall that was most spectacular – it just kept going and going. That feeling of huge paper losses is miserable, but in a strange way you feel alive which carries an odd exhilaration. Maybe it’s the sense of being out of control.
Either way, I’m a lot down. -53% year to date. It’s bounced a shade in the last week or so, but it’s hard to imagine how it recovers from this, especially as the impact of the pandemic looks as if it’s only just started.