Investments and pensions: what can you do about UK financial turmoil?
The financial turmoil of the past week provoked by the mini-budget has damaged the pensions, Isas and investments of millions of ordinary British households. What impact has it had on your money, and what, if anything, can you do about it?
Some individual shares have really cratered over the past year, and many dived further after the budget. Ocado, the online grocery retailer, is down 71% over the year. Persimmon, the housebuilder, is down 55%, M&S is down 49%. However, BP is up 28% and Shell is 36% higher.
Bad luck if you put your Isa money into a bond fund. They are sold as cautious, safe investments. But the ones invested in UK gilts – the bonds issued by the British government – fell by about 12% in just the two days after Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, and have not recovered since.
The FTSE 250 index, made up of medium-sized companies (retailers, housebuilders, etc) has fared far worse than the FTSE 100. It has slumped by 8% since the budget, and is down by nearly 30% since its peak in September last year.
The most popular fund in the UK for small investors is Fundsmith Equity, which manages about £24bn. Investors have lost about 1% in the past two weeks, and if you invested a year ago you are down 9%. But it is still up 72% over the past five years. Few will want to bail out.
Normally pension funds are steadier than the stock (equity) market, as they have a mix of shares, bonds and property. But with bonds doing so badly, they have been hit, too. For example, Legal & General’s standard pension fund invested on behalf of lots of UK employers has lost about a tenth of its value over the past six months.
You have little to worry about if you have a final salary-style pension, where what you get is related to how much you
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