FT Advisor podcast on VLS range

Thrugelmir

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

 And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

There's plenty of indicators that can be used to provide pre-warning. The unknown is the event that lights the fuse. 

tranquility1

Thrugelmir said:

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

 And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

There's plenty of indicators that can be used to provide pre-warning. The unknown is the event that lights the fuse. 

The fuse was lit in September 2019 when the Fed started printing money.  The printing of money is the only thing stopping the economies collapsing.

Thrugelmir

tranquility1 said:

Thrugelmir said:

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

 And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

There's plenty of indicators that can be used to provide pre-warning. The unknown is the event that lights the fuse. 

The fuse was lit in September 2019 when the Fed started printing money.  The printing of money is the only thing stopping the economies collapsing.

Money printing started a decade ago to stop the global banking system collapsing. Now the world is even more indebted than at the time of the GFC. The can kicking has continued. 

tranquility1

Thrugelmir said:

tranquility1 said:

Thrugelmir said:

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

 And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

There's plenty of indicators that can be used to provide pre-warning. The unknown is the event that lights the fuse. 

The fuse was lit in September 2019 when the Fed started printing money.  The printing of money is the only thing stopping the economies collapsing.

Money printing started a decade ago to stop the global banking system collapsing. Now the world is even more indebted than at the time of the GFC. The can kicking has continued. 

Yes, the GFC is when the current financial system broke beyond repair.  The can has been kicked ever since.


But in September 2019 the Fed embarked on the money printing which will bring this financial system to a head.  

bostonerimus

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

I don't have the knowledge to answer your questions, sorry.

All I'm saying is that there are a lot of very knowledgeable people on this forum who really know their stuff. And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

I guess such an event will be called a Black Swan? 

Knowledgeable people cannot see into the future. There is always a crash coming, but predicting when it will come is only for fools and charlatans. So the sensible people will take some profits when they can and buy depressed assets through a crash and always keep an emergency fund to ride out the bad times. Last year should have convinced everyone of the need to have a year's spending as cash in the bank if you can and that on the dips rebalancing will allow you to pick up some undervalued assets.

tranquility1

bostonerimus said:

tranquility1 said:

Shocking_Blue said:

tranquility1 said:

Albermarle said:

tranquility1 said:

Hexane said:

tranquility1 said:

Deleted_User said:

The point of raising interest rates is supposed to be to curb excessive enthusiasm, and after a long period of historically low rates, many borrowers are so used to low rates that quite a small interest rate rise will cause quite a lot of pain. Norman Lamont once said "No pain, no gain" about the use of interest rate rises to reign in the economy; but today there would be no question of raising interest rates to the levels of his day to reach to the "pain".

This idea that high-quality bonds (like those in VLS) could fall 20-40% over 3-5 years is simply implausible. Central banks have no reason to raise rates by the kind of amount that would lead to such large falls.

It just seems like more of the last decade's repeated assertions that the bull market in bonds is now over. I expect to hear the same predictions for at least another decade before it happens

Personally, I do like to hold a little cash, as well as equities and bonds, but not gold. Cash is likely to return a bit less than bonds, as is usually the case, which is why I wouldn't hold too much of it. For rebalancing alpha, long-term high-quality bonds and gold both tend to help; which is a reason that bonds have some value in addition to their stand-alone expected return. Holding a little gold is defensible - perhaps a matter of taste - but I would caution against going too far.

Also, the reason rates may be raised (and therefore crash the market, bonds, and the housing market) is runaway inflation.  And that's exactly what printing money like it's going out of fashion does.  That's where we are headed.

... yeah... although... not long after you posted this, UK CPI inflation fell to 2%. Possibly on its way back up to a wheelbarrows-full-of-cash style 4% 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58254000

Good luck with that.


Mountains of national debt and personal debt, can't move interest rates, printing money for fun, assets at ATHs.  What can possibly go wrong.

It is OK doomongering and  you might be proved right , or partly right anyway.

However as this is a savings and investments forum , then you should also be suggesting a sensible course of action .
Sell the house/home/investments /pension ? and buy gold , or guns ? What are we to do about this impending financial implosion that is apparently on the way ?

Precious metals, and stock up on all of your essentials and medication etc.

Houses are assets you can touch, so they are keepers.  The stock market will obviously take a massive hit (and therefore pensions), but they will recover, I would guess/hope.  Perhaps quickly, perhaps very slowly.  I still have a sizeable amount of my portfolio in equities, but that's because I have no plans/need for it anytime soon and I'm going to ride whatever the roller-coaster throws my way.  I don't want to miss any potential upsides and I don't want to not be in the market just in case it defies logic.

Just as a post-newbie reading this, as above, I'm assuming that moving from riskier holdings into Capital Gearing and the like, topping up on Premium Bonds, and perhaps looking at managed (rather than passive) mutli-asset funds is in some way a sensible way to mitigate the effects of such a market crash.

Otherwise..?

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

Thanks.

I don't have the knowledge to answer your questions, sorry.

All I'm saying is that there are a lot of very knowledgeable people on this forum who really know their stuff. And I just can't fathom why they can't see what's coming.

I guess such an event will be called a Black Swan? 

Knowledgeable people cannot see into the future. There is always a crash coming, but predicting when it will come is only for fools and charlatans. So the sensible people will take some profits when they can and buy depressed assets through a crash and always keep an emergency fund to ride out the bad times. Last year should have convinced everyone of the need to have a year's spending as cash in the bank if you can and that on the dips rebalancing will allow you to pick up some undervalued assets.

"A crash is always coming".

Sure, but we are now in unchartered territory. What's going on with our debts levels, our money printing, not being able to move interest rates, assets at ATHs. This is unprecedented and nobody knows how this will play itself out. I'm of the mind that it won't end well.

Albermarle

I think nowadays the 'do it yourself' nature of investing, together with the actual speed at which you can make changes to investments (few mouse clicks), puts people in a better position to be able to react (referring to funds rather than individual co shares)

Two points relevant here

The fact that you can change your investments easier than in the past , does not mean that you should do . Doing nothing is often the best thing to do . 

If you do change funds ( as opposed to market traded investments ) then there is always a time lag between the request and the deal . Probably a minimum of 12 hours and can be up to 48 hours ( longer if over a weekend )

tranquility1

Albermarle said:

I think nowadays the 'do it yourself' nature of investing, together with the actual speed at which you can make changes to investments (few mouse clicks), puts people in a better position to be able to react (referring to funds rather than individual co shares)

Two points relevant here

The fact that you can change your investments easier than in the past , does not mean that you should do . Doing nothing is often the best thing to do . 

If you do change funds ( as opposed to market traded investments ) then there is always a time lag between the request and the deal . Probably a minimum of 12 hours and can be up to 48 hours ( longer if over a weekend )

That's why I prefer ETFs such as VWRP, rather than VLS.

I want to see the fund in real time and be able to sell and buy instantly.

grumiofoundation

Shocking_Blue said:

masonic said:

Shocking_Blue said:

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

If you plan to use your pension to buy an annuity in 5-6 years time then it would be very sensible to de-risk. There aren't really any satisfactory low risk options for holding in a pension over the long term, so if you plan to keep it invested then it may just need to be tweaked to allow for drawing it down when the time comes. It may be possible to partially transfer your pension to a provider offering a full range of investment options, in which case you can manage as you would your other investments.

Thanks.

Yep, at the moment it is in a 100% equities fund on the investment side of the pension, which has been doing very well, but the provider also offers other funds (cautious, moderate etc), so might take a look.

I think nowadays the 'do it yourself' nature of investing, together with the actual speed at which you can make changes to investments (few mouse clicks), puts people in a better position to be able to react (referring to funds rather than individual co shares), so all this talk about market crash has folk believing they'd have time to avoid major losses, I suspect.

For traditional 'funds' you can't react instantly, whereas with shares, ETFs you can. Although for a lot of people the ability to react faster won't be a good thing.

On average for long term investors the best thing to do is sit on your hands. Didn't fidelity (US I think) publish an article a while go where it showed that the best investors were dead?

tranquility1

grumiofoundation said:

Shocking_Blue said:

masonic said:

Shocking_Blue said:

The comment on the impact on pensions is interesting. Being perhaps 5 or 6 years from planned retirement I'm already 'de-risking' holdings a bit, but I just wondered what, if anything, can be done to protect pensions. My work pension has an 'investment' side to it, so there is the option to move from risker to less risky in terms of the fund they offer for that. Presumably that's the only measure I could take?

If you plan to use your pension to buy an annuity in 5-6 years time then it would be very sensible to de-risk. There aren't really any satisfactory low risk options for holding in a pension over the long term, so if you plan to keep it invested then it may just need to be tweaked to allow for drawing it down when the time comes. It may be possible to partially transfer your pension to a provider offering a full range of investment options, in which case you can manage as you would your other investments.

Thanks.

Yep, at the moment it is in a 100% equities fund on the investment side of the pension, which has been doing very well, but the provider also offers other funds (cautious, moderate etc), so might take a look.

I think nowadays the 'do it yourself' nature of investing, together with the actual speed at which you can make changes to investments (few mouse clicks), puts people in a better position to be able to react (referring to funds rather than individual co shares), so all this talk about market crash has folk believing they'd have time to avoid major losses, I suspect.

For traditional 'funds' you can't react instantly, whereas with shares, ETFs you can. Although for a lot of people the ability to react faster won't be a good thing.

On average for long term investors the best thing to do is sit on your hands. Didn't fidelity (US I think) publish an article a while go where it showed that the best investors were dead?

LOL. That's probably about right.