Selling portfolio of Shares

[Jennypen]

Hi There,
I have a question regarding a share portfolio..made up of shares in british and irish companies valued at approx 75,000 euro. My mother inherited this portfolio when my dad died. He had inherited it from a sister who passed 2 years previous. My parents had little savings and no investments before this and hadnt the first clue what to do with these shares. In all honesty, since my dad died, since we have no share experience ourselves, these shares have just been left sitting with minimum monitoring from us and we arent willing to risk mam's future on this. There has been a slight drop in almost all of the share prices and we feel the best thing is to cash them in and put the money into an account with a guaranteed return so my mother is a little more sure of her investment. It's all she has and with the market a bit jittery right now we just want to do whats best for her in the long run.
She is happy to go along with whatever we think is the best way to go.
My question is, what is the easiest way for us to sell the shares? We have the actual share certificates. There are 11 companies involved in total and the share amounts range from 75 euro to 26,000 euro.
Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Jen.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Hi Jenny

If you look at the prices at which the shares were acquired, you will see that the portfolio will have increased very substantially over time.

the recent turbulence makes holders of shares nervous, but it's still the best place to invest for people of all ages.

if you do want to sell them, Campbell O'Connor is a user friendly stockbroker. I use them myself and I find them very efficient and happy to deal in certificates which some of the other brokers are not.

Brendan

 

[Froggie]

Hi Jennypen, I dont have any expertese in this area but if I were in your situation I would hold onto the shares for a little longer until the market stabilises. With that amount of shares a 4% improvement would mean €3000 extra. I do understand why you want to sell them but I would wait a couple of months.

 

[Calico]

I understand the advice that people are giving here - i.e. that over the longer term shares tend to win over other investments and that you should hold on to this portfolio but if your mother is elderly I agree that you should sell them in favour of something more secure. The previous poster gives the example of making 3k if they go up 4%. Well, that is true, but you could lose 20K by this time next year if the market turns........very easily. If your Mum is very old and/or you/she can't handle the prospect of possibly losing a lot then you should sell. After all, even after all the recent market volatility, shares have still made huge gains in the last couple of years.