with all the coverage of impending market crashes, what are you doing?

Bostonerimus1

You might think about rebalancing your asset allocation to account for the run up in equity markets over the last year. As far as AI is concerned I'm answering spam calls so that I get past the AI at the beginning and through to a real person and then I hum the Benny Hill ending music at them.

tigerspill

It really depends on your circumstances.
If I was in accumulation phase, I would be sticking with equities and buying heavy in any "crash" that comes along.
However, I am in decumulation.  I and my wife have good DB pensions and SPs coming later on.  So I have two main buckets - 1) seven years of cash to top up our DB/SPs to the desired level of expenditure; and 2) Most of the remainder in equities - mainly global tracker funds, but a couple of "wealth preservation" actively managed funds for some balance.  This seems to be working out well for us so far.  

El_Torro

SB1980 said:

Sorry if this has been covered in other posts.

As the title says really... all i see these days are reports that the AI bubble will crash, a market correction is coming etc etc i know that no one really knows, but is anyone doing anything in advance?

I am half tempted to sell some funds i'm pretty much 100% global equities in ISA LISA and Pension, 45yo M. My thoughts are that thing every is advised to avoid, timing the markets, sell now (high) hold in cash until the upcoming (therein lies the risk, i know) fall and then buy back in low.

I am not sure i am brave enough to actually do it, but is/has/will anyone attempt this?

It depends on when you are planning to spend your investments. Since you are 45 I assume you will be wanting to wait at least 15 years to cash your LISA in. Your pension maybe at 58, maybe a lot later than that. With these timescales I don't really see why you would want to get out of equities now. Increase your bond holding perhaps, though I wouldn't go too crazy on that.

Since you can take money out of your ISA penalty free whenever you want then depending on what your plans are you might want to look at that. If you're planning to buy a property next year and you're going to use money in your ISA to do it I would advise against currently being in 100% equities. 

History tells us that if you try to time the market you will probably get it wrong. 

Aylesbury_Duck

For my pension, I happen to be at the time when I do a 5-yearly check on one of my larger deferred DC pensions.  It's done very well all being in equities for the last five years (75% global, 25% UK) and given that I am likely to begin accessing it in perhaps 10 years' time, now is the time to de-risk slightly, anyway.  Even then, I'm going down from 100% equities to something like 84% across the four funds I'm selecting, so still reasonably aggressive.  That sort of exposure feels right because I could do with perhaps a little more stability should markets become turbulent, it's far enough away that any big drops will have a reasonable chance of recovery, and more importantly I won't be worrying about it for the next five years.

For my investments, I will almost certainly be drawing on them in five years' time to bridge the gap between retirement and accessing pensions.  I have about 1/3rd in cash and I've already de-risked the remainder to the VLS60 fund (from some all-shares and VLS80).  Again, the main thing is so that I'm at peace with whatever happens in the markets and am not tempted to fiddle in reaction to how the markets move, almost inevitably making bad decisions!

If the markets remain at or around their present levels, new money will go into VLS60.  If the market starts dropping consistently, I'll drip new money into VLS80.

subjecttocontract

What am I doing ? Absolutely nothing.

enthusiasticsaver

We are in drawdown phase now with DB pensions and DHs state pension now paying out with my state pension due early next year and we just withdraw on our investment ISAs and SIPPs to give us extra money for travelling so we will not be doing anything. Our IFA reviews quarterly and whatever he has been doing has worked for the last 8 years so we will just stick with our plans. 

strawb_shortcake

SB1980 said:

Sorry if this has been covered in other posts.

As the title says really... all i see these days are reports that the AI bubble will crash, a market correction is coming etc etc i know that no one really knows, but is anyone doing anything in advance?

I am half tempted to sell some funds i'm pretty much 100% global equities in ISA LISA and Pension, 45yo M. My thoughts are that thing every is advised to avoid, timing the markets, sell now (high) hold in cash until the upcoming (therein lies the risk, i know) fall and then buy back in low.

I am not sure i am brave enough to actually do it, but is/has/will anyone attempt this?

I'm two years younger than you,  and my S&S Lisa is my only exposure to the stock market.
I'm doing nothing but leaving mine as is for at least the next 10 years before I look to de-risk. 

I had this foray into S&S maybe 3/4 years ago so have only seen an overall upward trend, however I think I'm more of a risk taker than I thought, I just need to keep that, see the lows as a sale.

Once I tried to buy when the prices dipped and the order went through when they perked up again, so I've learnt timing the market is a fools errand. 

So I'll just keep buying units as normal. Though In the event they go really low then I might up my holding a bit from other savings pots

This is my pot to bridge a gap between retiring and taking my DB and SP both claimable at 68 (currently)

lolamancity

Probably hilarious to read, but I got a really bad sense of doom today for some reason. My head screamed move everything to cash but i stewed on it for a few hours before deciding to switch my kids Vanguard LS80 to 40 equity/60 and also my own from 100% equity to 40/60. My kids ISAs have had 83% returns in the 7 or 8 years I've had them, and one of the kids is 17 at the moment so I just felt like I needed to action something a bit safer for my own peace of mind... for a while anyway. Also moved my Nutmeg LISA to 3/5 ( 60 equity/40) risk down from 5/5 because there seemed to be no point doing the Vanguard accounts without doing that one too. I'll be happy to move everything back to more risky products in the near future, but at the moment, all I read is doom and I'd kick myself if I did nothing and it turned out to be doom.

brasso

I think people are being a little bit too dismissive about this. There has indeed been a lot of credible talk about the increasing likelihood of an AI-fuelled dip/crash/correction. Most of the broadsheets have carried articles recently, and there was also an interesting Robert Peston podcast on the topic.

It's not that AI is considered likely to go away. We know that it's here to stay. It's the extraordinarily wild funding that's pouring into businesses considered likely to benefit from it, often based on little but hope and good PR/salesmanship. The Peston podcast mentioned more than a billion dollars recently pumped into a single startup that doesn't even have a product on the drawing board yet. It's all reminiscent of the dotcom bubble. Just like AI, no one doubted that the dotcom revolution was underway but the crash came as a result of huge sums being pumped into flimsy enterprises floating ideas that weren't leading anywhere.

Anyway, let's wait and see. But to answer the OP, yes I am rethinking my investment strategy as a result. I'm not fearfully selling everything and waiting for a crash though. I'm using it as an opportunity for a long-overdue overhaul of my approach which has been too scattergun for too long. I started investing about 25 years ago with a strict idea of asset allocation. Over the years that's drifted a lot and it's time I got back on track. I've benefited a lot from the US tech revolution in the last couple of decades but I'm pulling my horns in now by reducing my exposure to that sector, selling off single UK and US stocks, adding some bonds and REITs, increasing my Asia holdings. All in low-cost funds, mainly Vanguard.

I don't want to be out of the market so I know there will always be volatility but I want a smoother ride through retirement. It's time I stopped stressing over the madman in the White House and started enjoying some of the fruits of the last 25 years.

GeoffTF

I am 75 and do not need to draw money from my investments. My equity percentage is above 60%, so reinvestment goes into bonds. If it goes below 60%, reinvestment will go into equities. (It is more complicated than that, mostly for tax reasons, but that is the overall effect, as near as makes no difference.)

There are people who are worried that the equity market will fall. There are others who are worried that bonds will be wiped out by inflation. If do not know what will happen, so I diversify. I try to keep things as simple as I reasonably can, and do as little as I reasonably can.