Should you sell up before the summer?

The old adage 'sell in May and go away' has been knocking around the City for decades. But is there any truth to it? Tim Bennett reports.

"Sell in May and go away" is a stockmarket adage that's been around for decades. It says that you should dump stocks about now, and look to pick them up again just ahead of St Leger Day in September (when the famous St Leger horse race takes place).

But beware as is almost always the case with these simplistic rules of thumb, blindly following this instruction could lead to disappointment.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.