My very, very safe and conservatively invested Mutual Fund is slowing losing value. What should I do?

It's been a good investment that has also seemed safe. For years its shown slow but steady growth. No its been on an equally slow downturn. This has been going on for months now. Is this merely indicative of the coming recession and the market in general? Should I stay with it or re-invest somewhere else?

You won't lose any money, if you don't sell. Stay with it. It will probably go up again in value.

Hold tight....market has had a down turn this year and it may continue. This may be a good time to start adding more funds to this fund over the next year or two.

Stay were you are, the market is struggling, but I'm going to venture a guess her and suggest that its probably out performing the S&P 500. The stock market goes up, the stock market goes down. Just sit put, this is not the time to be selling off a conservative investment.

You should do nothing - its just reflecting the slowdown. Hold tight.

investments are always risks.Man is too erractic -so his plans.

First let's examine what the Wall Street mavens tell you about mutual funds. Ever heard this one? Buy a good fund and stick with it even when it is going down. WRONG! Go with a good fund manager and follow him from fund to fund. WRONG! Don't buy the current "hot" fund, as it will go down when this fad is over and you will lose your money. WRONG!

Let's look at the one basic reason all these ideas are promoted. The mutual fund industry which is the biggest owner of individual stocks in the world doesn't want you to take your money out of their particular fund so they all band together to promote the above ideas even when you are losing money. Fund managers are not paid for performance. They are paid by the amount of your money the fund keeps.

Do you want to stick with anything that is going down in value week after week? The great cry of stockbrokers is, "The market always comes back". But when? In your lifetime?

I don't know of any individual fund manager that has made money for the investors every single year. They all run hot and cold, even the best of them. You can put the best jockey on a slow horse and he is not going to win the race.

The Wall Street gurus talk about "hot money" flowing from one fund to another and want you to feel guilty just because you want to make more profit. Hey, what is your money in there for - cold pizza?

There is one basic rule that will keep you outperforming the pack. If your mutual fund is not currently (meaning in the past 12 months) outperforming the S&P500 Index you should sell it immediately and buy a different no-load fund. Where do you find the best performing funds? Each day Investor's Business Daily publishes a list of these funds. Look for the day they publish the top performers for the past 12 months.

Don't pay any attention to the longer-term statistics. Each week you should look to see if your fund is still listed in the top 25. If it isn't, sell it and buy the one at the top. Simple. Forget the 3-year, 5-year and 10-year records. My philosophy is 'What have you done for me lately?'.

As far as selling stock this is what I do. I keep at 10% trailing stop which I change every Monday morning with my discount broker. The open stop is 10% of the previous Friday's close. This may or may not be the top of the move but I don't care. I'm either stopped out with a small loss or a profit, but my money is always protected. When I have doubled my money I will sell half my position and let the rest ride with the following stop. Protection of your capital is the most important thing you can do.

If you are losing value, sell your holdings and reinvest in an Exchange Traded Fund at this site : http://tinyurl.com/349pj3

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Hold it since you said; it very safe & conservative. Market will bounce soon. By the way which MF you are worried about?

Since the housing market is still going down and US debt (the source of the tech bubble, the housing bubble, and the currently inflating commoditied bubble) is still at record highs, I don't think we've reached bottom yet.

Until we do (somewhere south of DJIA 10k), we will trade sideways or down. You can buys TIPS (inflation protected Treasuries) and then you can guarantee your investment will only go up and beat inflation (although very slowly). Then when we hit the bottom (may not happen until 2009), you can re-enter the market.

The stock market is extremely volatile right now. It is great for traders, bad for investors.