Newbie pension question

leopoldo_2

I recently started a pension fund with Penfold (I'm self-employed) and an investment ISA with Wealthify, I was just wondering how often you will generally see fluctuations in the value of either of these? No changes as yet but only registered them during the week so no surprise there.

Thanks

RacingDriver

It depends on what you are invested in, most funds for example are priced daily, whereas ETFs trade on the stock exchange and therefore the price fluctuates throughout the day.

gm0

Varies with provider reports and web sites and apps and tools. Lag of a day or two from market price closes is not uncommon with pensions.  Most investible pension funds have a daily price or bid and offer published.

Think on this - If you are say 25 and retire at 60 and then live 40 years.  Your investment time horizon for retirement assets is 75 years.  Why do you think "daily" fund prices or weekly charts are particularly relevant to your saving.  You know that "volatility" exists as noise over the top of long term investment returns with cycles of 5-10 years.

Focus on cumulative long term return from time in the market and regular contributions added all the time i.e. through the volatility rain or shine.

Volatility may well mean a 50% or more loss turns up. This is great as you can keep buying units at half price during it which requires you to do *nothing* different.  Looking at the volatility generates an emotional response which for many people creates an incentive to do the wrong thing.

Implication keep saving but don't look at it all the time. 

Day trading for short term and momentum based gains is an entirely different animal with an investment time horizon of hours to weeks.

Some people shadow this process themselves with spreadsheets and plugins to web publishing.

leopoldo_2

Thanks, it was more out of curiosity really, I wasn't expecting constant fluctuations and don't intend to monitor them daily. I have no experience in investing so I have chosen packages where those decisions are made for you based on your risk appetite. Will reduce that risk as I get closer to retirement.

Albermarle

leopoldo_2 said:

Thanks, it was more out of curiosity really, I wasn't expecting constant fluctuations and don't intend to monitor them daily. I have no experience in investing so I have chosen packages where those decisions are made for you based on your risk appetite. Will reduce that risk as I get closer to retirement.

I would not even monitor them monthly . Best to concentrate on your job/life  and make regular direct debit contributions .
Normally with long term investments they are best left alone , especially after a market drop .
Later in life when the amounts invested have got bigger then maybe time to pay a bit more attention to them. 

leopoldo_2

Thanks, makes perfect sense, I'm sure that once the novelty wears off I will do exactly that.

dunstonh

y, I was just wondering how often you will generally see fluctuations in the value of either of these? 

Daily if you use pension funds, unit trusts, OEICs or similar.      Or in real time if you use ETFs, ITs or shares.

I believe the portfolios you may have chosen from have a combination of those assets but bundled into their own portfolio.  So, you probably only see changes once a day and not in real time.

I recently started a pension fund with Penfold (I'm self-employed)

Just for clarification, self employed can use virtually any retail individual pension. There is no such thing as a self-employed pension anymore.   Although there are some companies that may target certain groups in their marketing.

leopoldo_2

Thanks everyone

Malchester

I have just transferred to Penfold from PensionBee. Excellent service. The value of my pot changes each day as the value of my pension fluctuates. You can see the figure at the top of the opening page

leopoldo_2

Still not showing any changes but I assume that is because they are new accounts or something. Any reason why you switched?

Malchester

I leopoldo_2 said:

Still not showing any changes but I assume that is because they are new accounts or something. Any reason why you switched?

I switched because of incompetence by PensionBee in terms of poor admin, poor systems and poor communication. EG a withdrawal failed because they could not identify me. That's OK but their website says they will do this within one day and tell me if ther is a problem. I assumed everything was OK until the day for receiving withdrawal came and they then told me they could not identify me. Plenty more examples like that. They forgot about my original transfer to them and left it on a table for months and blamed the firm I was transferring from. Promised me I could set up regular ongoing monthly withdrawals as part of orginal transfer, 2 years later still not available and was told by CEO they were not going to do it. Was sent an annual statement which showed my pension value as £0 and I had 3 years to go until I retired and would be drawing the pension - been rtired 2 years already and have drawn monthly the whole time.

Looked at transferring another pension (defined cont) they wrote to me saying because it was a defined benefit I had to meet certain criteria. I just got fed up of their incomptence