Playing FTSE
Just after I started working as a Freelance Website Designer here in West Wales, I decided that due to the fact that I wouldn’t have a company pension scheme that I should put some money away each month that could act as a pension. Some went into a standard ISA savings account, although most of that has since been spent on a new conservatory – Well, the conservatory will be for my retirement! I also decided to invest a little (not very much at all) into a Stocks & Shares ISA and specifically one that tracked the FTSE 100.
Here’s a graph showing the progress of the FTSE 100 over the past 30 years. Have a guess when I started investing in it? Go on, guess….
FTSE100
Yep. you got it, my first payment into the tracker account was made in January 2000. Until then, the FTSE 100 had been rising virtually non-stop for at least 20 years. Between 1984 and 1995 it grew steadily. The next 5 years saw it rising at a much more rapid pace until the end of 1999. It was the thing to invest in, continual growth since it first started, and in recent years it had been outperforming all savings accounts, beating inflation and all forecasts and predictions had it set to continue that way. That was until the day I put some money into it. As soon as I did, the markets plunged.
Exactly to the day, the trends of continued growth reversed and I started losing money. From the heights of nearly 7,000 points on the day I started investing the FTSE 100 fell dramatically over the next few years down to around 3,500 points. It climbed again between 2003 and 2007 but once again fell back rapidly to below 4,000 points soon after. Since then it has teetered around the 5-6,000 mark but has never made it anywhere near the heights it was at on the day I first started investing. Needless to say, the stock market and my FTSE 100 Tracker ISA hasn’t quite lived up to expectations and hasn’t made me rich. I’m not likely to be retiring anytime soon as I don’t think the money in it will last me more than a few months at the moment!
If the predictions and forecasts had been right the FTSE 100 would have been way up over 10,000 points by now and I would have made a nice little profit. As it is, the FTSE 100 has fallen and although I haven’t actually lost any money if I take into account inflation I probably have lost out in real world terms. Oh well, that’s just my luck when it comes to money I guess – I’m certainly not destined to ever be well-off financially!
2013 has seen a good start for the FTSE 100 though and it has reached a 5 year high at over 6,000 points, so who, knows, it was always supposed to be a long-term investment, maybe my luck will finally turn?
