Property vs shares: the price you can see and the price you can't

This letter has just described two markets. One fell hard enough to make the news. The other — the apartments and villas a few streets from wherever you are reading this — moved too but did it quietly. Most of us feel far calmer about the second, and the reason is worth a minute.

Only one of them is priced out loud. A share is valued every few seconds the market is open, and the number arrives whether you asked for it or not. A home's price is settled only when it sells. Everything in between is an estimate — including the medians in this letter — and nobody rings on a Tuesday afternoon to say your flat is worth less than it was on Monday.

That is a difference in visibility, not in safety. A price you are never shown is easily mistaken for a price that never moved.

The asymmetry cuts both ways. Shares can be sold in an afternoon, at a good moment or a terrible one; a building cannot, which spares you the panic sale and rules out the sensible ones too. And both are quoted before the costs that never appear on a statement — agency fees, service charges and empty months on one side; spreads, fund fees taken quietly out of the price, and whatever the currency does on the other.

None of this makes either the better holding. That depends on your horizon, your tax position and whether you are staying for the longer term. It is only worth being clear that calm and safety are different words. One of these markets tells you what it is doing. The other lets you find out later.