It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

Sea_Shell

Problems in the US around employment figures and Fed rates, I think.

US markets were down on Thurs / Frid

westv

So perhaps a small correction rather than an adrenalin boosting old school crash??

Pat38493

Sea_Shell said:

Nikkei down 12% overnight

Bloomberg Futures have Nasdaq down 5%, on top of last weeks falls.  

Not sure which finance experts can explain market behaviour - I guess it's just not rational except on the very long term.  For about the last year, markets got excited and went up if they thought that the economy was slowing enough to warrant cuts in interest rates.

We are now getting cuts in interest rates and data that indicates economies are slowing (exactly what they apparently wanted).  However the markets have now decided that this is bad news rather than good news and tanked!

Go figure.

Luckily most of us pension investors are in it for the long term.

Ibrahim5

I am just glad that I sold quite a bit of equity in the last few weeks. Cash nicely topped up. I had a hunch that this was coming.

Roger175

Ibrahim5 said:

I am just glad that I sold quite a bit of equity in the last few weeks. Cash nicely topped up. I had a hunch that this was coming.

Same here, I sold my holding in two specific US investment funds approx 6 weeks ago and having recently done two transfers, I was reluctant to invest it all, so held back 50% of it in cash (well mostly STMM fund) in the hope the markets would take a downturn before I bought back in

pterri

Very please with the DB I’ve got due as the main pension! 

SouthCoastBoy

pterri said:

Very please with the DB I’ve got due as the main pension! 

Yes, it's interesting, over the next 10 to 20 years I think people will start to realise how valuable the public sector pensions are as the private sector has moved almost completely to dc pensions and the exposure to the associated vagaries of the stock market 

My daughter is a school teacher, just completed 3 years, she has already got a pension that would have needed tens of thousands of pounds in a dc pension to buy a fully index linked annuity. While in comparison I changed jobs a year ago, earn a £60k+ salary and have a dc pension of about 6k for the year. It just illustrates the disparity.

Sea_Shell

We've been 20% cash for a while.

Enough for about 7 years of spends.

pterri

SouthCoastBoy said:

pterri said:

Very please with the DB I’ve got due as the main pension! 

Yes, it's interesting, over the next 10 to 20 years I think people will start to realise how valuable the public sector pensions are as the private sector has moved almost completely to dc pensions and the exposure to the associated vagaries of the stock market 

My daughter is a school teacher, just completed 3 years, she has already got a pension that would have needed tens of thousands of pounds in a dc pension to buy a fully index linked annuity. While in comparison I changed jobs a year ago, earn a £60k+ salary and have a dc pension of about 6k for the year. It just illustrates the disparity.

Feeling very lucky I have to say. There are discussions about whether there is a way to share some risk for DC pensioners. At the moment all the investment/income risk is on them whereas for DB it all on the employer (with the pension bailout scheme as a back stop admittedly). Neither is desirable really. 

Pat38493

pterri said:

SouthCoastBoy said:

pterri said:

Very please with the DB I’ve got due as the main pension! 

Yes, it's interesting, over the next 10 to 20 years I think people will start to realise how valuable the public sector pensions are as the private sector has moved almost completely to dc pensions and the exposure to the associated vagaries of the stock market 

My daughter is a school teacher, just completed 3 years, she has already got a pension that would have needed tens of thousands of pounds in a dc pension to buy a fully index linked annuity. While in comparison I changed jobs a year ago, earn a £60k+ salary and have a dc pension of about 6k for the year. It just illustrates the disparity.

Feeling very lucky I have to say. There are discussions about whether there is a way to share some risk for DC pensioners. At the moment all the investment/income risk is on them whereas for DB it all on the employer (with the pension bailout scheme as a back stop admittedly). Neither is desirable really. 

Yes - it seems to me that one issue with this kind of approach is that it forces anyone who actually looks into the situation, to save up significantly more for their retirement than they will probably need, in order to cover off the worst case scenarios.

I guess some might argue that this is not a bad thing if that money is invested in the economy through the stock markets abut I am not an economist.