There are a range of low-cost services with prices starting at around pounds 10 for shareholdings

There are a range of low-cost services with prices starting at around pounds 10 for shareholdings of up to pounds 1,000 - which may be particularly attractive for those with small numbers of shares in a range of privatised companies.The very cheapest brokers operate by post; they will not sell until they have your share certificate. Trying to sell and then buy back after a crash is a mug's game - investment timing is notoriously difficult, even for the professionals You could sell and then miss the bounceback. And even if the stock market doesn't crash, it would be a brave investor who thought it might repeat its recent strong performance. Looking out for the rest of the year, then, there is probably more chance of losing than making money - and losses could be substantial.What this means is that now is not a good time to be lobbing large amounts into stock market investments in the hope of catching the recent wave Better instead to wait until prices have come back. Whether you should cash in existing investments, however, depends in part on what else you plan to do with the money, as well as any restrictions on those investments - for example if you have Peps that, once encashed are lost, or if you are committed to savings plans that will penalise you if discontinued.Many people will have a range of privatisation shares that have performed strongly. If these were investments you had earmarked to cash in, say to help buy or move house sometime this year, you should almost certainly be looking at selling them now. But if your savings are put aside for the longer term, you are best off leaving them.

This time around, share prices have risen almost uninterrupted for two and a half years - a rise of 60 per cent or more.Interest rates are also firmly on the up, with each quarter point rise increasing the relative attractions of the building society and, in turn, potentially undermining shares. In a single year that's a stunning return from the stock market. It far outstrips anything a building society has to offer. But the warnings of a looming crash, rather than going away, have got ever louder. There have been parallels drawn with the run-up to the 1987 October stock market crash - the last big one - which was also preceded by a period of strongly rising share prices.

Unit trust prices are fixed by a Securities and Investments Board formula and are directly related to their underlying portfolios.Oeics, like investment trusts, can be traded on the stock market, have their own board of directors and borrow money. Serps is likely to be scrapped by the Government once it has completed its root-and-branch review of pension provision. But whatever Labour may do to Serps in the future, even as things stand many people will not be entitled to a Serps pension, while others may have built up an entitlement in respect of only part of their working lives.It is currently possible to build up entitlement to two distinct state- run pensions: the basic state pension and the additional pension, also called state earnings related pension, or Serps for short. Entitlement to both parts of the state pension depends on the national insurance contributions you pay, and on quite separate and different formulae.The precise formula for working out a Serps pension is complicated.