Hi there. 2021 when the market was still doing great, I started being interested in investing. So I heard from friends about Frankly. I didn’t know much about „gestaffelte“ Investments, so I put all the 3a money that I had in the bank, in 2 different accounts of Frankly with risk 95. Soon I realized it was a bad decision to have invested everything at once. The account started being in minus, by now having a loss of 8000‘ and staying like this since a very long time. I have 18 years to pension. Does anyone have an advice what would be the best move in order to recover the loss? In the meantime I also payed some hundreds on fees at Frankly…
Thank you!
Hi,
First assess your risk tolerance. 95% shares investment has an high volatility and potential losses.
With my risk tolerance, I will continue to invest in the same fund to the maximum annual amount in order to average losses and gains over the next 18 years.
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There is no recovering loss. You made your decision informed or not, and the consequences have arrived.
I think the best way forward is reading up on what you are doing, and then make another decision (which can be to change nothing). Of course it can drop more whilst you inform yourself. But the tendency to buy high and sell low has always worked to fuck over retail investors. First they FOMO into a market that has risen beyond reason, to sell when it inevitably drops, to FOMO into something else, or finally stay in cash and get eaten by inflation.
Sorry for your loss, but this probably was a cheaper lesson than it could have been (because it was not actually that dumb).
EDIT: clarify my view
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Read something about investing (or rather, personal finance):
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philosophy_for_non-US_investors
Finpension, which I recommend for 3a, has useful blog articles.
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Doing nothing and waiting.
If you want to recover as quickly as possible: invest more. Much more. And hope for rising stock prices.
Cutting your losses now and investing in something less risky won‘t help in recovering.
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It’s not a loss until it’s materialized 
In another 18 years I’d expect it to recover (especially if you continue contributing along the way “down”).
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Stocks go up and down. You are experiencing the downs, chances are there will be ups in the future in that 18 years time horizon that you have.
As suggested by others, the best shot at a recovery that you have is to keep your asset allocation and ride the wave: all the way down, then all the way up. Be wary that “down” can be much more down and that we may not have hit the bottom yet. Stocks can go down further than they already have.
If following that plan affects your sleep and/or your mental health, as it can, then I would not deem it worth it to wait to do a new risk tolerance assessment and get on in your new allocation without waiting, as suggested by @Helix. Be aware that changing your allocation will expose you to a different risk profile than your current investment and that may affect the timeframe of the recovery.
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Thank you all! Yes, I did the beginner mistake to invest when the market was up… Now after 2 years I am more informed, but still not enough to feel sure about my moves. Or maybe not enough experienced.
I tend to believe that over 18 years the market will recover. For the moment I wait. This year I opened a VIAC account with 80 risk and no bonds to see their performance . This time with a monthly payment. I feel much safer and it seems more stable.
Anyway, everywhere there is loss, in True Wealth or Selma too.
Thanks again!
Are you sure cash instead of bonds is the way to go here?
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Are you aware that each provider is playing with the same market?
Your viac strategy isnt much divers to the one you regret with frankly…
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I wouldn’t call that a beginner mistake: nobody can predict what the market does and investing a lump sum is the more profitable strategy most of the time. It’s not like 3a allows for accounts to be split and dollar cost averaged into the market anyway: at most, you could have invested your accounts one at a time at different time intervals. That wasn’t a mistake in my book.
The mistake was not assessing your tolerance for risk (the chances for the market to go down, both deeply and/or for a prolonged period of time) and not taking the time to realize and imprint into yourself that the stock market does go down and that it can do it tomorrow (or even today) and not recover for years. That is the exercise I would be doing right now: assess how willing I am to stay invested and ride the market through downturns relative to my need, ability and willingness to take risk and decide on an asset allocation (more or less bonds) that matches that.
Note that 2022 was an awful year for bonds too, so even that wouldn’t really have protected you from the downturn: they happen and the life of an investor includes dealing with that as a reality, mainly by maintaining peace of mind during them. In all cases, not timing the market properly wasn’t a mistake at all.
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Also the market could go down for the next 10 years.
A big recession could happen and it is not ideal to wait the recovery and not invest in the mean time.
The advise will be to wire automatically the money every month from now until retirement and forget about it.
Keeping your cash is like betting against the market and investing only at high.
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Your advices help me a lot to see things from other points of view. Fortunately I am not really hanging on the 8000, so I am kind of strong thinking about a loss in this range. But of course, who wants to loose?
I will think about another strategy and get back to the forum
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Stay invested. The worst thing you could do is to sell now.
Humans are wired to be risk averse but if you take a step back with 18 years to go your glass is truly half full. You have the opportunity to keep buying into the market with an averaging strategy whilst the markets are off their peak or moving sideways.
In 18 years by far the most likely outcome is that 8000 will be a rounding.
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I agree. I don’t have the feeling that you (Cellioana) did anything wrong so far except for overestimating how much risk you can take and still feel good about it. Even buying at a “high” is not a mistake. The best time to invest is always now (time in the market).
The worst you could do is panic and sell when it’s down. With a horizon of 18 years the best course of action is to do nothing and stay the course.
Stocks go up and down. It’s normal. Maybe it will go down even more. That’ll be normal too. It’s a good exercise to get used to it. But even if hypothetically you lost 8000 CHF (which you didn’t, since you didn’t realize the loss) over a life is really not so much.
It happened to me to overestimate my risk a bit. I just stayed the course, and only reduced my stock percentage after a new all times high was reached.
If it continues to go down and you feel uncomfortable, maybe you can invest new money (separately) with a smaller percentages of stocks. But it’s not a good idea to touch what you have already invested under emotions of fear.
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In fact frankly already wrote good advice about people in your situation here.
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If you consider historical data to be a good indicator of future developments, the chances of your recovering the loss and making a very tidy return on top within 18 years are nearly 100%.
In the past, people entrusted their money to an asset management service or bank account and didn’t think about it much for years at a time. What mattered was what they had at the end of the investment term. With today’s investment apps and real-time data, the tendency is to use investing as a source of entertainment rather than a means to grow wealth.
My personal recommendation would be to just leave your investment be and check on it in 5 years or so. For your peace of mind, it could be beneficial to put any additional retirement savings in a retirement savings account, because you already have a lot invested. Eventually, as the savings account balance grows, your portfolio will end up a better match for your risk tolerance.
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