Pension Investment Mix - Brexit Stick or Twist

GSP

I started a thread a couple of weeks back, but I wasn't clear and it got relocated to the savings forum.

As I type we still don't know how Brexit will play out. Many businesses are being proactive. Some are holding their cards until a definite "deal" of some sort or another occurs.

In this really uncertain time and months maybe years going forward I am interested how inviduals with a diversified pension portfolio are reacting, or staying put with what they have.

There are many pension investments of one type or another. Will people be staying clear of UK investments at this time. Staying clear of FTSE linked investments etc.

We could be seeing some large swings in areas (even some winners if they could be identified). Interested to know what the "smart money" might be on and who can see opportunities from all this, and what to avoid.
Thanks.

Linton

The future is always uncertain. Trying to predict it is a mug's game, even if you succeed the chances are that sufficient numbers of other people have got their first and taken the benefits. It therefore makes sense to set up your portfolio as broadly as possible so that problems in a particular geography or industrial sector do not cause unacceptable damage and that you gain some benefit from unexpected growth areas. Having done that it is simply a matter of watching events take their course.


I have made and will make no changes whatesoever to my portfolio on the basis of BREXIT. My growth portfolio is already protected having less than 15% in UK investments.

AnotherJoe

GSP wrote: »

I started a thread a couple of weeks back, but I wasn't clear and it got relocated to the savings forum.

As I type we still don't know how Brexit will play out. Many businesses are being proactive. Some are holding their cards until a definite "deal" of some sort or another occurs.

In this really uncertain time and months maybe years going forward I am interested how inviduals with a diversified pension portfolio are reacting, or staying put with what they have.

There are many pension investments of one type or another. Will people be staying clear of UK investments at this time. Staying clear of FTSE linked investments etc.

We could be seeing some large swings in areas (even some winners if they could be identified). Interested to know what the "smart money" might be on and who can see opportunities from all this, and what to avoid.
Thanks.

I would avoid being invested in "real" UK companies. But thats pretty easy to do because most "UK" companies you might think of arent "really" UK anyway. BP, or Uniliver or Vodafone or British Tobacco, for example that you might think of as "UK".

Nominally UK but most of their income is from global sources (which is why they generally go up when the Pound falls).

A "real" UK company would be one that pretty much did all its business in the UK. Lets say (and I'm guessing here) but Pret, Wetherspoons, Premier Inn would i think be examples of that. And you'd have to look pretty hard to find funds that only have UK investments of that manner. This assumes you arent buying their shares directly.

And I dont mean to disparage any of the above there may well be reasons why say, Premier Inn might do well even if the UK doesn't, for example people downshfting into cheaper hotels,and people not eating in restaurants at lunchtime but buying a sandwich in Prets instead might mean they do well against a backdrop of the UK doing badly / pound falling. But i think a general pool of companies whose main revenues were UK only would do badly. I dont know if there is one though. Maybe a UK smaller companies or perhaps FTSE250 but even there, many UK smaller companies might be tech companies with a lot of specialist overseas business and many FTSE250 are companies with a big international reach



The FTSE is (IMO) not a great place to invest because of its concentration in a handful of sectors, rather than because its "British" companies. From memory i think the top 20 companies in the FTSE100 make up half the whole value of it and theres only about 5 industries in those.

GSP

Thanks for your replies.
The vote got through this evening but "still to play out yet".
Got me thinking about Premier Inn. Suspect overseas holidays to Europe will be down next year with Brexit (if it happens now?) with more people staying in the UK. PI along with other related leisure industries here may do rather well with more numbers staying put.