Re: Is it a good time to enter the market ?
Well your all going to love this. If i don't follow the advice i have to give the advisor a $1000 fee for the cost of preparing the advice.
should i take the loss on the chin
and start planning from scratch
You all seem to have plenty to comments about my scenario and I respect the Knowledge, how did you start your journeys. What reference material etc
To me the share market is very secretive nobody likes to share wealth
Doh! - I think you've done well in putting the question to the forum and getting responses and I respect the candid approach you've taken.
What exactly has the advisor 'prepared' for you - has he presented you with a range of options, fully costed, with upper and lower bound expectations including projected losses for the pessimistic case scenario? What are you paying for with the $1000. From where I stand the sting in the tail is effectively a form of coersion from where I see it. Any decent advisor will charge a flat fee and advise you of a range of options and should provide costings and would take a conservative approach. How did you come to deal with this person - was it through personal recommendation from a friend?
I'm not saying the advice won't work, nobody can predict that accurately, but it doesn't sound like you've been fully informed as to the risks and instead are being subject to a bit of a pushy sell. A balanced advisor would have explained that there'd been a strong bull market, that there were significant risks in entering at this point in time but potential significant rewards, would have discussed the current stage of the interest rate cycle and the state of world credit markets and tightness of credit etc.
Is the finance (i.e. the equity loan) being arranged by this individual as well? If so is that another commission based situation?
On the subject of how to start out with investing - read Tech/A's thread "Ideas for establishing a capital base" for some starting tips though you've already established a capital base. There are plenty of threads on here on all sorts of investment/market related topics.
I don't agree that people are secretive about the share market and there is plenty of free advice on here (so remember again - you get what you pay for lol - not all of it is good advice).
I would recommend reading Ben Graham's book and also the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad" (Robert Kiyosaki or something like that). (Robert Kiyosaki predominately focuses on property, Ben Graham on the stock market, but from a conceptual view both espouse similar concepts about how to determine true compelling value and act based on your own view rather than follow the herd.
To understand shorter term investing then you need to start to understand market psychology and understand disciplined trading and techinical/charting principles. Guppy's books are a good basic starting point to charting/trading concepts including useful things like determining capital allocations and the importance of money management principles in preserving your capital base.
You've got room to make mistakes though and making mistakes is an important part of any learning process. Investing in a managed fund as an idea is not necessarily a bad one, and picking market bottoms is also not easy though most with some experience would advise on either waiting until there is indisputable, compelling value (fundamental graham style investor - graham provides metrics) or clear evidence of a technical/chart turnaround (technical investing) or a combination of both before wading in heavily after a significant slump.
Plenty of people give advice but often people don't follow it.
Emotions - greed, fear, laziness/lack of discipline are the biggest enemies to succesful long term growth of wealth. Also there is so much apparently conflicting advice - so you will have to find your own path through it.