How safe is the average pension

Tight_Fart

What type of commercial property has he gone in to?
Hope it's not high st shops.

goRt

A pension is purely a tax wrapper.
The discussion is around sentiment in the market.
What if brexit fails and our currency recovers diving down the overseas earnings?

I would keep enough in cash (within or outside of the SIPP) so that you don't need to sell any assets until the recovery has taken place or try to time the market!

Woodford claims to have gone bearish, but has lost loads of bets recently and I, personally, don't think he's implemented his strategy correctly.

AnotherJoe

Your colleague is an idjut.


Its one thing to go into gilts, bonds, cash because you think a recession trade war whatever is going to happen. Probably not a good idea but one can understand why some one might do this.


OTOH to think that a recession trade war whatever is going to happen, and then move into commercial property is like thinking the ship you're on is going to sink, yet buying solid gold bullion from another passenger rather than a life jacket. The gold bullion will sink just as fast as the ship.


ANd FWIW i posted a reference to this afew days ago i cant find now, but someone looked back at the years 1920-1939 and compared property with equity as an investment strategy. Despite the Wall Street Crash, equities outperformed property by more than 5x (including rent) and property fell just as hard as equities in the crash but it took much longer to recover.

Bianchiintenso

Thank you to all who have replied, the initial conversation came about over a pint so as you can imagine a little short on detail, it appears he has made his fund 'safe' by moving to bonds/cash from shares/equities, and as I understand now is in the process of changing to pension mortgages for some high st properties he thinks he's identified as good investments. I have told him how 'relatively' well my 'risky' pension is doing while his is pretty much static. Hey Ho each to their own.

cfw1994

OldMusicGuy wrote: »

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I have just retired and have 23% of a large pot sat as cash, costing me nothing. That (plus other savings) is my security blanket. The rest is invested for at least 10 plus years so will ride out any short term downturns.

A question on this; you or others may have some wise words!

I get that it makes sense to lower exposure to stock once into pensions or indeed approaching it.
That said, cash (bonds/gilts?) is then effectively losing money (ie, not making inflation rates of interest).....so are there any alternative strategies to lower that risk yet still try to at lease make inflationary levels of interest?

& how does one decide how much to put into that portion of the pot? Presumably enough to ride out a 3-5 year market crash?

I read your reply and thought 23% sounded a lot, but then again, I have also seen strategies that wind up to pension time with only 20% in equities (80% cash)....
Just curious!