E39: Trump, tariffs and what it all means for your pension with Emma Maslin, Lucy Evans and Clare Reilly
The following is a transcript of our monthly podcast, The Pension Confident Podcast. Listen to episode 39, watch the video or scroll on to read the conversation.
PHILIPPA: Hi, welcome back. This time, stock market volatility. Everyone’s talking about it. What is it and what could it mean for your savings?
If you’ve been reading the news lately, you’ll know there have been lots of ups and downs in global stock markets. Now, why? Well, those recent swings are mostly down to a blizzard of announcements from the new Trump administration in the US about spending cuts and trade tariffs.
Now, not being able to predict what might be announced next has been making investors all over the world nervous. Nervous investors, that usually means volatile stock markets. But times like these can also present opportunities, and we’ll get into that later.
First, though, we’re going to break down what’s been happening and talk about the ways this uncertainty can impact your investments now and into the future.
I’m Philippa Lamb, and just before we make a start, if you haven’t subscribed to The Pension Confident Podcast yet, why not click right now? If you turn on notifications, we’ll let you know the minute there’s a new episode.
Now with me today, I have Financial Coach, Founder of The Money Whisperer, and good friend of the podcast, Emma Maslin.
Personal Finance Reporter at the Daily Mail, Lucy Evans, is here for the first time, too. And from PensionBee, another old friend of the podcast, Chief Engagement Officer, Clare Reilly. Hello, everyone.
ALL: Hello.
PHILIPPA: Now, here’s the usual disclaimer before we start. Please do remember, anything discussed on this podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial advice or as legal advice and when investing, your capital is at risk.
For this episode, in particular, it’s really important to remember, past performance isn’t an indicator of future performance.
Now look, you all know your way around the financial markets. You all know about money. But different personality types, they deal with volatility and anxiety in different ways, don’t they? I’m interested to know how you’ve all been dealing with this uncertainty lately. I mean, are you checking your pension investment daily or are you super calm?
CLARE: I don’t get an emotional reaction when I see market volatility or my balance moves around. I’m used to it. I’ve worked in pensions for many years, so I’m used to it moving around. I’ve not changed my behaviour. I’ve not logged in to check my balance more than normal. I’ve continued to make my regular contributions through this period, and I know that they’ll have a greater impact in the longer term because the market’s on sale at the moment.
PHILIPPA: You see, she’s a real professional. Come on, Emma. I mean, people are worried. I’m sure a lot of people are looking a lot more often than they used to.
EMMA: I’m pretty similar to Clare. I’m sure people are. My husband is one of these people that’s really feeling the fear. A little drop, and he’s on the phone to me. He’s sending me screenshots of the markets, his pension balance, telling me we’re going to have to work five, 10 years longer. I have to really calm him down. But on a personal level, I’m the nice balance to him, and I’m really not doing anything differently to how I have been forever.
PHILIPPA: I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with those screenshots - stress or laugh?
EMMA: Laugh. Well, laugh and impart some of my wisdom that we’re going to be imparting today as well.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, exactly. Lucy?
LUCY: I’m pretty similar, actually. I’ve not been checking any more than usual. I just think I’ve got a while to go before I retire, and there’s a long time for the markets to recover before then. I think it’s best to just have the hands-off approach, keep making contributions, and trust that it’ll recover at some point.
History of market volatility
PHILIPPA: OK, so the top-line message here is calm, which is good. Stock market volatility, it’s nothing new. I’m thinking we might start with a little bit of history, Lucy. Of course, the big fear is always about, does this mean there’s going to be a financial crash?
People will have heard about the Wall Street crash back in 1929, 10 years of depression after that. I mean, a lot more recently for most people, I’m thinking about 2008 and the global financial crisis. I mean, at that time, I was looking at the numbers and it was amazing. I mean, one of the big US stock indexes, the S&P 500, which is always thought about as a bellwether of what’s going on in stock markets, it lost half its value. I mean, it was just horrifying. Just remind us why that happened.
LUCY: Yes, so obviously this isn’t the first time we’ve seen market volatility, and it’s been far worse in the past. To understand the 2008 financial crisis, we need to understand, really, it was about the US housing market. It was down to these things called subprime mortgages. Housing prices in the US were tipped to soar, and a lot of investors overseas poured lots of money into the housing sector. These subprime mortgages were given out to households in the US that maybe could default on their mortgages. Usually, there’s a lot of checks that go into making sure that a household can afford those mortgages and can afford those payments. Even sometimes loans were given out to pretty close to the house value or even above the house value because everybody thought that US house values would just continue to soar. Investors just thought, well, worse comes to worse, if the borrower defaults, they can just sell the home for more than they lent out.
PHILIPPA: But it didn’t work out like that, did it?
LUCY: It didn’t work out like that. Investors, including a lot of British banks, had heavily invested in the US housing market through something called mortgage-backed securities. These weren’t rated as risky, even though they should’ve been. Eventually, when the subprime borrowers started to default, a lot of the investments started to plummet. It caused the credit markets to freeze. I’m sure you can remember people queuing to get their money out because they had a lot of interest in these mortgage-backed securities. Then obviously, Lehman Brothers collapsed in the wake of all this and caused the markets to crash.
PHILIPPA: Everything went down like a pack of cards, like a house of cards, didn’t it? Though, as you say, it started in the US. On this occasion, again, it’s news in the US, which is freaking out the markets, but it’s a global market. Confidence is key, isn’t it? When something happens, other investors get nervous, other countries, other markets get nervous, and the whole thing starts to feel like it’s teetering a bit, even if it isn’t necessarily teetering, I think is the point here, isn’t it? The impact here was very bad for us, the UK went into a deep recession, didn’t it? It took a long time to recover.
LUCY: Yeah, it did. There was a mass panic and fear among investors, and everybody started to pull their money out quite quickly because they didn’t know which other firms were impacted by these risky subprime mortgages. And yes, it’s key to remember that just because it happened in the US, a lot of UK investors are also invested in the US. A lot of people’s pensions were invested in the US. The S&P 500, like you said, lost almost half of its value. The FTSE 100 on the day Lehman Brothers fell lost 4%, but across the year, it was a third. It was really bad news for people’s investments and people’s pensions.
PHILIPPA: It was really severe, and we all felt that chilly wind for a long time, didn’t we? But thinking about it, this obviously was not the first recession we ever had. As I said, there were recessions in 2000, there were recessions in 1990. Are they happening more often now?
LUCY: Not necessarily. We didn’t necessarily have one here in the 2000. It was over in the US, although our stock market was quite impacted by it. But I think it’s important to understand the difference between a recession and a technical recession. A technical recession is when the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) falls for two successive quarters. Then there’s recession in the way we all think of it, where there’s a massive economic downturn. I think it’s Bloomberg that said we might get more of these technical recessions more often, but it’s not in the way we all might think of a recession in the massive mass unemployment and economic downturn.
PHILIPPA: Hey, it’s me, Philippa. Just interrupting briefly to remind you to click on that subscribe button so you never miss an episode of The Pension Confident Podcast. Remember to share, rate, and review, too. Now, I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of this month’s conversation. Happy listening.
What’s happening with Trump and tariffs
So thinking about what’s happening now, Clare. The causes are different. It’s the same idea, something’s happening in the US which is freaking everyone out around the world. But in the last few years, we’ve seen other big geopolitical events, haven’t we? We’ve seen the pandemic, we’ve seen the invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen conflict in the Middle East. There’s a lot going on. It unsettles the markets, doesn’t it, generally? Now we’ve got the US President, Donald Trump. He’s settling in for his second term, and he’s doing what he likes to do most. He’s shaking things up, isn’t he?
CLARE: Yeah, I think it’s really - when he stood up on 2 April on Liberation Day with his big board of all these countries that he announced there’s going to be reciprocal tariffs on goods coming out of these countries to the US.
PHILIPPA: So this is taxes. He’s taxing imports.
CLARE: Yes. I think the big realisation there - when we saw global markets respond - so global markets following that day, across Asia, across Europe, across the UK, and some parts of Africa, America, all the markets went down. You might’ve sat in London thinking, what difference does this tariff on goods coming out of Vietnam to the US have on me?
PHILIPPA: Yeah.
CLARE: But actually the interconnectedness of global supply chains now has a huge impact on you. If we just look at Vietnam, for example, If we take one example out of the thousands of companies that would’ve been impacted by these tariffs. Let’s look at Nike. Nike manufactures around half its shoes in Vietnam. If we put a tariff on all of those shoes coming out of Vietnam and going across to the US, that significantly raises Nike’s cost of sales, which has an impact on Nike’s future revenue, Nike’s future business prospects. It introduces huge uncertainty for Nike’s management because they don’t know how much cash they’re going to have coming at their business in the future. Their share price drops. So back in London, if you have Nike in your pension, along with all of the thousands of other companies who are in a similar situation to Nike and are very impacted by these tariffs, your pension balance goes down.
And so suddenly, I think, something that was very interesting about Liberation Day was this ability now for people to watch the news, watch Trump, and connect it back to their pension in that way and watch their pension go down as a result.
PHILIPPA: Which can be very frightening. Lucy, we’ve been talking about shares, but it isn’t just shares is it? This volatility in the market, it affects all sorts of investments, bonds, commodities, all sorts of things.
LUCY: Yes, on bonds, these are effectively government IOUs, and it’s when the government uses it as a way to borrow money and you get back the face value at the end and interest payments along the way.
PHILIPPA: It feels like it should be a sure investment.
LUCY: Yes, absolutely. Especially US Treasury bonds, they’re considered safe haven assets because it’s very unlikely the US Treasury is going to default on its interest payments. During times of market volatility, bonds are seen as safe, and a lot of people pour money into them. But something really interesting happened after Liberation Day. All of a sudden, interest rates increased on them, and that shouldn’t really be happening. It spooked economists and investors because -
PHILIPPA: It was illogical.
LUCY: Yes, absolutely. There could be several explanations for this. One is that tariffs could push up US inflation, so people want more in return for their investments, really, for lending the government money. But like I said, that shouldn’t be happening. We don’t know why Donald Trump announced that 90-day pause, but it did come at the time when the bond market started to freak out a little bit.
What happens next?
PHILIPPA: So there’s unpredictable all around. It’s widespread, it’s different sections, it’s different countries. I mean, it’s all in a state of flux, and there’s no point denying that right now. But what’s interesting, I think, is that this is more complicated than a story of shares and bonds going up and down on one day or the next day. It’s about trends, isn’t it? It’s about the anxiety of a long term trend. Clare, what’s your sense about where this trend might be heading? I know it’s a big ask because no one really knows what’s going to happen in the short term.
CLARE: I think the only thing we can really be sure of is more uncertainty. I think you’ve mentioned the 90-day pause on 9 July, that’ll end. There’s going to be another announcement there. It feels like - you used the word blizzard earlier. It does feel every morning there’s a blizzard of news coming at us, whether it’s geopolitical, it’s connected to wars globally, whether it’s Trump tweeting on social media with his opinions on another topic. I think what we need to do in this period, the main thing to focus on, is just learning a bit more about volatility and being better prepared for it in the future, because there will be more volatility. We’re all long-term savers. There will be more of it. If we understand it and we understand why it happens, we understand how markets react to it, we’re going to be in a better place to handle it next time and we won’t have such an emotional reaction.
How might the UK government respond?
PHILIPPA: And obviously, it’s not a short-term problem, this. Our government is looking at it thinking, how do we respond? How do we keep things on an even keel with the tools at our disposal? I suppose I’m looking forward to the Autumn Budget, which is the next big thing, the next moment when we’re going to be hearing from the Chancellor with a raft of whatever she has in mind at the time. Is there anything they can do to insulate Britain from this?
LUCY: I do think the Bank of England could have a key role to play in this. It makes regular decisions on interest rates, and it’s poised to cut interest rates this month. Maybe by the time this is broadcast, they’ll have cut interest rates. When Trump did announce these tariffs, the expectation of more base rate cuts this year, that was the expectation we’d have, I think, three or four further ones this year as they try to combat that low growth and combat that volatility as well.
What does this mean for pensions?
PHILIPPA: This is impacting our pensions, as we’ve said. None of us wants to see our pension balance falling and all these headlines about potential recessions. It’s natural to feel, I think, that we should take action. There’s that rush to action. [Like] you’ve got to do something about this - like your husband, Emma, [saying] “Look at the screenshot. Look what it says. We need to do something!”. But pensions in particular, it’s the biggest investment most of us have, isn’t it? The key message there surely must be the risk is real, but the risk is spread in a pension pot, isn’t it? It isn’t just about shares, it’s invested in a whole array of things to insulate us from risk.
EMMA: It is. I think it’s really important to come back to that when we’re starting to get overwhelmed by some of the anxiety in the media and what’s going on. Remember, when you’re investing in a pension, you’re investing in a diversified portfolio of what could be lots of different assets.
PHILIPPA: Just remind everyone what sort of things might be in there.
EMMA: OK, so we might have equities, so stocks and shares. We might have some bonds. We might have a little bit of cash. We could have anything from commodities to real estate. I like to think of it like a shopping trolley with lots of different things in there. I think looking across the globe, different markets, different industries, different sectors can have different reactions. It’s just something to bear in mind that the more diversified your pot - your shopping trolley - the less reactive it is to what’s going on.
PHILIPPA: Thinking about the diversity of pension funds, can you put a bit of detail on that for us? For example, in one or two of the PensionBee funds, what mix are we talking about?
CLARE: Yeah, I mean, for example, in Global Leaders, which is our under 50s default [plan], you’d have approximately 1,000 of the world’s largest and most successful public companies. At any one time, you’d be invested across all geographies, across a range of sectors. You’d have that huge diversification, global diversification of the equity basket there.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it, Clare? Fund managers, that’s what they do. They look at that shopping trolley and they think, “do we need more of this or less of that?”.
CLARE: Yeah, they’re doing that all the time. They’re doing that all the time.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, this rush to action, it’s a strong urge, right, isn’t it?
CLARE: Yeah, and I think if you haven’t experienced market volatility before, you might get an emotional reaction to seeing your pension balance going down.
PHILIPPA: It’s a fight or flight, isn’t it?
CLARE: Yeah, but I think most people would caution against [having] a rash action as a result of that. If you’ve got 20 years ahead before retirement, there are going to be many more of these ups and downs ahead of you that you need to be there for the down and the up.
The impact of age and lifestage
PHILIPPA: I mean, you talk about age, and it’s fair to say any decisions you take, they’re going to factor in your age and stage, aren’t they? Because as Lucy says, she’s young, she’s relaxed, she’s got a long time for her pension pot to grow. So these swings, even if they’re really acute, [she has] plenty of years to absorb that and take advantage of that growth. If you’re older, if you’re getting to the point where you’re thinking, actually in the next few years, I want to take that pension, is that a different situation?
CLARE: Yeah, you’re in a different situation. If we look at COVID, so when the market dropped suddenly in March 2020, some people lost 20% off their pension. It felt like overnight out of the blue. There was a lot of key messaging then and guidance from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for people who were in retirement and needed to make withdrawals. The guidance was, if you need money when the market has fallen, try and use alternative sources first. Try and use your State Pension. If you have a rainy day fund, try and take that money first and use it first. Because if you do take money out of your pension when the market’s down, again, you realise the losses. So that was the messaging. But of course, if you’re in retirement and you’re experiencing volatility, it might be that you’d be better off in a plan that manages volatility. So at PensionBee our over 50s default is actually the 4Plus Plan, which is a plan that balances growth with stability. It targets a 4% above Bank of England cash rate over a minimum five-year period. But it also has a team over at State Street, the money managers who’re seeking to reduce volatility compared to equities at the same time by adjusting the mix of assets in the portfolio on a weekly basis to respond to these big changes that we see in markets. Because there are opportunities and challenges in those.
Other investments and emergency funds
PHILIPPA: Emma, it probably is just worth talking about investments you can access regardless of age. I’m thinking about things like Stocks and Shares ISAs. I mean, obviously, we can’t give advice, but are there things that savers should be thinking about there, too?
EMMA: Yeah. I mean, if you’re invested in a Stocks and Shares ISA, let’s think about my analogy of the shopping trolley. Essentially, you might have a shopping trolley that’s from Sainsbury’s and a shopping trolley that’s from Tesco’s. One is your pension, one is your Stocks and Shares ISA. They could be full of roughly the same things. They’re just a different shopping trolley. So your Stocks and Shares ISA could’ve been impacted in the same way as your pension through all this volatility. So I think, as Clare’s just mentioned, we need to be aware of where the assets are that you might have in your portfolio that can be accessed that haven’t been impacted by volatility first. So more traditional cash savings if you’re looking for money that you need to be able to access right now.
PHILIPPA: So emergency fund, and we often talk about that on the podcast, don’t we? The idea of holding a little cash cushion. I mean, how big [of] a cash cushion? Obviously, this isn’t an ideal world where people can afford to put money away, but how big a cash cushion do we think people should ideally be trying to have in terms of several months spending?
LUCY: I actually wrote a piece a few weeks ago on this in light of the volatility. Obviously, it’s really good because then you don’t have to rely on your investments. It’s typically around three-to-six months for most people.
PHILIPPA: It’s quite a lot of money, isn’t it?
LUCY: It’s a lot of money. We did the calculations per age, and it’s a sizable amount you have put aside. But that means then you don’t have to access all of your investments when they’re down, if you have an emergency. But when you’re coming up to retirement age and in retirement, it’s worthwhile having two years in a cash buffer. That’s because if your only income is drawdown, you don’t want to have to rely on that. Two years is typically enough time for markets to recover. That’s why you’re meant to have a bit more.
PHILIPPA: That’s a really interesting thought. Can you remember the numbers in your article about how much money we were talking about for younger people?
LUCY: I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s in the tens of thousands. If you’re thinking about six months worth of spending, especially for someone in their 40s and 50s when spending is their highest, that’s - six months is a lot of money.
PHILIPPA: That’s cash you put somewhere, you can get at it straight away.
LUCY: Yes, absolutely. It might be premium bonds, for example, or everybody loves premium bonds. You get the chance to win money and you can access it quite quickly, or just an easy access savings account.
PHILIPPA: It’s interesting that, isn’t it? Because we also say, make your money work for you, invest your money, don’t just save your money. But is that a strategy people might think about right now if they’re worried about market volatility? Rather than thinking they need to do anything with their investments they have right now, they might just think, well, maybe I’ll save a little bit more cash. So it cushions them against having to draw on their investments if things stay tricky for a long time.
LUCY: I think it’s a bit counterintuitive when you want to make your money work really hard for you. You think, “oh, actually, I’m going to leave it in a cash account where it’s not going to grow as much”.
PHILIPPA: Because with falling interest rates, it doesn’t seem like a good thing to do, doesn’t it?
LUCY: No, but I think it’s really important because if you have to take money out of your investments instead of - if you don’t have that cash buffer, then the losses are probably going to be more than what you’ve missed out on by keeping it in cash.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, so something to think about.
EMMA: I think there’s probably something to be said at this juncture about what we call ‘lifestyling‘, where with pensions, as you get closer to retirement age, at that point when you’ll want to be able to access your money. The pension fund managers are taking investments out of more risky assets and putting the money into less risky assets. I’d advise everybody to take a look at what plan they’re invested in. It might be in discussion with a financial advisor or through your own research that you may want to think about some - obviously, it doesn’t help right today in terms of what’s going on. But if you’re of a younger age but approaching retirement age, I think it’s something to really bear in mind that the process of what we call lifestyling can enable you to be less at risk of some of the volatility through that reduction of equities within your portfolio.
PHILIPPA: Yeah. So in this idea of insulating yourself in volatility, but at the top of the podcast, I did talk about potential opportunities in all this market uncertainty. I mean, that is how markets operate. Professionals in the market, they make the most of these highs and lows, don’t they? I mean, it’s a big subject. If we stick with pensions, is it, for example, a moment when you might think about increasing your contributions to your pension?
CLARE: Yeah, it absolutely is. But I would say that because I work for a pension company, wouldn’t I?
Pension contributions and tax relief
EMMA: One of the things that I tell people all the time is we always have to remember the great thing about pensions is tax relief. For every £80 that you put in as a basic rate taxpayer, £100 is ending up in your pension pot. There’s nowhere else -
PHILIPPA: Because the government contributes?
EMMA: Because of tax relief. I always say, even if you’re a little bit worried about volatility, you’re getting that instant uplift through the benefit of tax relief. It’s free money. It’s the greatest thing on offer in our financial market. I think that’s something really key to help people switch their thinking from a more negative view of, “oh, everything’s a bit crazy, and I’m not really sure, and I’m a bit fearful”, to, “well, there’s a known certainty that when you put some money into your pension, you’re getting that tax relief”, and it can help just temper some of that feeling of uncertainty that people may have.
PHILIPPA: Obviously, the longer you can leave it there, the more it grows, ideally.
EMMA: Correct.
Where to find guidance
PHILIPPA: Now, look, these are big decisions. I think we should talk about where people can get good guidance.
CLARE: So over 50s can get a free telephone appointment with Pension Wise, which is an impartial and free government guidance service telephone appointment to talk you through all your options once you reach 50.
PHILIPPA: We’ve talked about that on the podcast before. It’s excellent, isn’t it? Really comprehensive.
CLARE: It’s excellent. It’s really comprehensive. Then, of course, the PensionBee website. We have loads of blogs and content on all sorts of topics. We’ve got lots of topical ones at the moment which get updated all the time in relation to what’s happening with the tariffs, the impact that has on your pensions. There’s a regular series there.
PHILIPPA: Emma?
EMMA: Well, as a PensionBee customer, in talking to my husband as well and trying to get his nerves to reduce a little bit.
PHILIPPA: Calming your husband!
EMMA: I’ve looked at my plan fact sheet. I think for everybody out there, looking at what you’re invested in and getting some clarity on what that looks like, how diversified you are. I’m relatively young. I know that I’ve got a long period of time to ride out these ups and downs. I’m still 100% in equities within the plan that I’ve chosen.
PHILIPPA: Because you think you’re happy to ride the risk because you’ve got a long time before you want to take your pension.
EMMA: I know that I’m not going to access the pension for a while. But I think that for anybody, it makes sense to really understand what you’re in for. Just having a look at your plan fact sheet is a really good starting point.
PHILIPPA: Because we’ve talked about this before on the podcast, to this idea that at times of stress, people are often, quite understandably, and I think we’ve all done it, I know I have, just inclined to not look at their finances. If you see the news is bad, just don’t look, pretend it’s not happening, do the ostrich thing. But actually, I’m going to say the thing we always say, which is the more you know, the more reassured you can feel, even if times are turbulent.
LUCY: Absolutely. I really like the MoneyHelper website, and I use it a lot just for my own research. But also the importance of independent financial advice can’t be overstated. As much as you can do your own research, if you can afford advice, I think it’s really, really important to just get someone to look at your plan and your financial arrangements, and they can help you.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, before you do anything rash. And talking of people doing rash things. There has been a lot of talk in the press about people turning in their pensions and liquidating them for cash. I mean, that’d be a very radical thing to do, surely?
LUCY: Yeah, I think any financial adviser would tell you not to make any rash decisions. Don’t listen to the noise and consolidate those losses. So yeah, absolutely.
PHILIPPA: I think we can all agree the worst place for your cash is in a biscuit tin under the bed?
ALL: Yep!
PHILIPPA: What should people think about if they’re even flirting with the idea of doing that?
EMMA: Just remember that it’s very hard for anybody to predict the bottom. I think if we could all make these predictions, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be on a desert island with a pina colada.
PHILIPPA: Sunning ourselves.
EMMA: Unless you’re in desperate need of the cash, history shows us that some of the best days follow some of the worst days. I think finding ways to remain calm, finding those other ways to relieve some of your fear, if it’s fear, be that research, be that speaking to an independent financial adviser, is the best course of action.
PHILIPPA: There’s an age factor here. There’s an age barrier to when you can take your pension anyway.
EMMA: Yes, there is. Obviously, if you’re under the age of 55, it’s very, very tricky to take that money out anyway.
PHILIPPA: Thank you, everyone. That was really, really helpful at a tricky time. It’s very reassuring to hear from all of you. Thank you.
Market volatility, of course, it’s an evolving story, and it’s an important one which, as we’ve been discussing, impacts most of us. We’re keen to hear what you think about it. If you’ve got questions about volatility or comments about anything you’ve heard in the discussion today, why not email us? Here’s the address, podcast@pensionbee.com. Or if you’d rather DM, just search PensionBee on whichever platform you like to use.
Remember to rate and review the series wherever you listen and catch up with any episodes you missed on any app, YouTube, or the PensionBee app, of course, if you’re already a PensionBee customer.
Next time, we’re going to be talking about ADHD and finances, from the realities and challenges to tips for staying organised and in control of your money.
A final reminder, anything discussed on the podcast shouldn’t be regarded as financial advice or legal advice, and when investing, your capital is at risk. Thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
Period | Market Event | FTSE World TR GBP (%) | 4Plus Plan (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
4Plus Plan’s inception – 6 Sept 2013 | QE Tapering, China Interbank Crisis and its aftermath | -5.44 | -2.41 |
3 Oct 2014 – 15 May 2015 | Oil price drop, Eurozone deflation fears & Greek election outcome | -5.87 | -1.77 |
7 Jan 2016 – 14 Mar 2016 | China’s currency policy turmoil, collapse in oil prices and weak US activity | -7.26 | -1.54 |
15 June 2016 – 30 June 2016 | BREXIT referendum | -2.05 | -1.07 |
