Value of pension is freaking me out

cfw1994

Well, 20:20 hindsight is strong🤪
My current ‘wealth’ would have been dramatically enhanced had I ditched Baillie Gifford American on 5th November and move it to cash….but over the past 5 years it has grown over 150%, over 2019-20 it performed around 120%……so the current painful trouncing has to be taken in context.  

& yes, it was a salutary lesson in locking some gains in and de-risking sooner.

Selling and shifting now would only crystallise the recent losses.  Are you needing to access those funds in the near future (next couple of years)?  That is the biggest risk of all - effectively crystallising the losses.

Would an IFA have prevented it happening?  Only hindsight would ever tell you that 🤷‍♂️

Will it climb back? Braver souls than me will predict that….my feeling is ‘yes’, but then again, my feeling never spoke up in November to scream ‘move it’ 😱

Just re-read your original post: you are paying in over £1k a month, so you are getting those fund units at a massive discount right now.  That is, I would suggest, a decent thing to keep doing….but that is just my opinion 😉

NannaH

Hindsight is definitely a wonderful thing.
I am thankful that I offloaded a big chunk of SMT last year though,  realising those gains has softened our current losses, it was rebalancing rather than foresight,  it had grown to over 10% of the portfoilio so I took out all the profit.  

dunstonh

Plot thickens - most of my money is invested in funds with the Risk Rating 6.  A few smaller bits in Rating 4.

What risk scale is being used?     

 So presumably I should have derisked this back in October before the funds lost so much.

How would you know to derisk before a fall?

 Still dropping alarmingly (appreciate alarming is a relative term but over £20k in a month is 15% of this particular pension and the other pensions have stayed steady). 

15% is a bit higher than a typical 100% well-diversified portfolio would be down.   It does appear clear that you are not investing in line with your risk tolerance.   However, do remember that the fund that is dragging you down at the moment is also the one that contributed to your larger gains over the last two years and is still up much higher than most other funds.

Had you not been in that fund, your fund value would be much lower now. 

segovia

The markets have taken a bit of a hammering since the beginning of the year, mainly in the USA. The FTSE is showing signs of some resilience.  Interest rate increases in the USA and Ukraine is spooking the markets. Netflix dropped 25% as they claim they will not meet their subscription targets, that didn't help the Tech Sector. Its worrying as I have seen my portfolio drop 40K in 4 weeks, It will come back again. 

theblueflash

segovia said:

The markets have taken a bit of a hammering since the beginning of the year, mainly in the USA. The FTSE is showing signs of some resilience.  Interest rate increases in the USA and Ukraine is spooking the markets. Netflix dropped 25% as they claim they will not meet their subscription targets, that didn't help the Tech Sector. Its worrying as I have seen my portfolio drop 40K in 4 weeks, It will come back again. 

Exact same as me, 40K drop - it’s been useful context reading threads on here though as for me it was 16% drop in ISA but 4% drop in overall assets so probably not worthy of the constant hitting of F5 I am/was doing :-)  

Baillie Gifford Europe and BlackRock Throgmorton down 25% and 23% since I bought them in September’ish. Bad timing. 

[Deleted User]

What is the purpose of counting some short term “losses” or “gains” in one small portion of the overall portfolio?  I am managing 10 investment accounts which, together with cash accounts make up the overall portfolio.  Have absolutely no idea how each one performs in isolation although, I guess, could find out. 

Workerdrone

theblueflash said:

segovia said:

The markets have taken a bit of a hammering since the beginning of the year, mainly in the USA. The FTSE is showing signs of some resilience.  Interest rate increases in the USA and Ukraine is spooking the markets. Netflix dropped 25% as they claim they will not meet their subscription targets, that didn't help the Tech Sector. Its worrying as I have seen my portfolio drop 40K in 4 weeks, It will come back again. 

Exact same as me, 40K drop - it’s been useful context reading threads on here though as for me it was 16% drop in ISA but 4% drop in overall assets so probably not worthy of the constant hitting of F5 I am/was doing :-)  

Baillie Gifford Europe and BlackRock Throgmorton down 25% and 23% since I bought them in September’ish. Bad timing. 

Timescale is everything. I have holdings in BG American Select which I bough for the kids pension over a year ago. They are down 33%. Then again the kids are only 11 & 13 so they have they best part of 50 years to turn around :-)

Workerdrone

Nasdaq up 1000 points since Thursdays low. Thats either quite a dead cat bounce or the markets have digested and priced in multiple fed rate rises this year.

Parking_Trouble

Deleted_User said:

What is the purpose of counting some short term “losses” or “gains” in one small portion of the overall portfolio?  I am managing 10 investment accounts which, together with cash accounts make up the overall portfolio.  Have absolutely no idea how each one performs in isolation although, I guess, could find out. 

Why wouldn't you be interested in individual accounts?
Don't you want to validate why the value of an account has shifted?
Surely it's a constant learning process.

Audaxer

segovia said:

The markets have taken a bit of a hammering since the beginning of the year, mainly in the USA. The FTSE is showing signs of some resilience.  Interest rate increases in the USA and Ukraine is spooking the markets. Netflix dropped 25% as they claim they will not meet their subscription targets, that didn't help the Tech Sector. Its worrying as I have seen my portfolio drop 40K in 4 weeks, It will come back again. 

A £40k drop sounds a lot, but it depends on the total value of the portfolio as to whether it's a big percentage drop.