Pension investments/Global crash

Somebody

SVaz said:

It will only take one rogue state, or even a larger scale Carrington type event, to destroy the World’s financial infrastructure and send us back to pre industrial revolution levels.  Banks and institutions are globally linked
No amount of annuities / Gilts/ whatever is going to prevent that.   

We are SO tech-reliant that even a major cyber attack could wipe out all data,  if the records are gone,  how do you prove what is yours?  

Bring in digital id with absolutely everything linked and it’s even worse,
 how do you even prove who you are? 

Yes, it’s an unlikely ( hopefully) scenario but we’ve never been closer to a doomsday event. 

I'm a simpleton.  I fail to see how an annuity already in payment will be impacted?   

ChippyIbe

Looking at some historical charts for the S&P500 , NASDAQ, FTSE-250 and FTSE-100 :
(sorry I'm too new here to post links, please Google them yourself on e.g  macrotrends.net and wikipedia ) 
and ignoring inflation in every case....

...the S&P 500 took a full seven years to reach its Aug 2000 peak and then crashed again for another six years so only from March 2013 has there been a 'proper' recovery from the dot-com crash in terms of the raw index value.

The NASDAQ took longer still.

The FTSE-250 did slightly better in as much as the dot-com crash fallout started later, in 2001 and "only" lasted four years, then crashed again for "only" four years after the global banking crisis. In 2025 it has yet to recover its pre-Covid index value.

The FTSE-100 suffered about as much as the S&P 500 but has done better than the FTSE-250 of late, weathering Brexit, Covid, war in Ukraine and Trumpian trade tantrums, with up to about about a two-year recovery for the worst impacts. 

I guess by drip-feeding into markets (though pound-cost-averaging) then the impacts are lessened, which is about all we can do when it comes to equity-based markets, and is what long-terms pension holdings do, by definition. Avoid substantial and sudden moves in or out of funds, and spread investments around.  
       

ali_bear

If you want to get all doomsday-scenario about things consider the theory that we are about to move from an age when national governments controlled their own currencies, to one in which the only reliable currencies are digital and controlled through crypto-based exchanges, and are thus no longer controlled by any kind of elected body. 

dunstonh

ClashCityRocker1 said:

So - is there a "safe" pension fund? I'm with L&G so if I moved all my pension investment into their cash fund would that remain completely unaffected by a market crash? Or just less so?

There was a crash earlier in the year.  What did you do then?

...the S&P 500 took a full seven years to reach its Aug 2000 peak and then crashed again for another six years so only from March 2013 has there been a 'proper' recovery from the dot-com crash in terms of the raw index value

The US was very poor in that period and lagged global equities ex US.    Its part of the reason they have been better in this cycle.

The FTSE-250 did slightly better in as much as the dot-com crash fallout started later, in 2001 and "only" lasted four years, then crashed again for "only" four years after the global banking crisis. In 2025 it has yet to recover its pre-Covid index value.

UK mid cap has been off the boil since the Brexit referendum.   UK mid cap is where you see most of the Brexit damage.

SVaz

I was talking about total financial meltdown.
Something like China suddenly up and selling their vast holdings of UK and US Gilts / Tbonds to sink our economies.
If the UK or US went bankrupt and couldn’t make payment on Gilts and other debt. 

At least the US still has the Federal Gold reserve,  we have sod all. 

Financial protection would fail - perhaps not likely but not impossible. 

Norway has the right idea,  if we’d gone that way with a sovereign wealth fund built from North Sea gas and oil and not sold off our gold and other assets to foreign owners, we would be in a far better position to weather any global catastrophy, whether war or natural like a massive CME or Yellowstone erupting.  

LHW99

we would be in a far better position to weather any global catastrophy, whether war or natural like a massive CME or Yellowstone erupting

Not sure any financial planning would protect from Yellowstone going up. The climate effects would affect food supplies worldwide, possibly for decades.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-would-happen-if-a-supervolcano-eruption-occurred-again-yellowstone

Nebulous2

It's a surprisingly warm day for the time of year. I've been out on my bike and I'm now having a beer. 

Reading this I'm not sure whether to have a few more, or whether to go and buy 200 tins of soup. Tesco are doing 10 tins of Heinz for £9. 

If a doomsday scenario, such as; a super volcano erupting, a major electromagnetic event which wipes out all data and electronic money, a pandemic which kills 90% of infected people, a nuclear war or a plague of frogs and locusts occurs, then I think we'll have more to worry about than where our pensions are invested. 

Or maybe more people simply need to get or use their bikes?  

QrizB

Someone has been watching too many B-movies.

Disclosure: I did quite enjoy Supervolcano when it was on TV 20 years ago (how time flies).

And Deep Impact, and Armageddon, and By Dawn's Early Light, and even Threads has a place in my DVD collection.

Moonwolf

Do we need a new preppers thread? Cash in your pension, buy a bunker, buy tinned food and bottled water. Bulk buy antibiotics as you will need them to trade for necessities in the future.

Aylesbury_Duck

QrizB said:

Someone has been watching too many B-movies.

Disclosure: I did quite enjoy Supervolcano when it was on TV 20 years ago (how time flies).

And Deep Impact, and Armageddon, and By Dawn's Early Light, and even Threads has a place in my DVD collection.

Deep Impact and Armageddon were released quite closely together.  Quite similar plots, too.  I preferred Deep Impact, Armageddon was a bit...silly.  I remember Ben Affleck's take on the plot:  Surely it would have been easier to teach astronauts to drill, rather than teaching oil drillers to be astronauts?