If you look today, what is your pension performance YTD?

[soupdragon1]

It was a kind of hiding behind the sofa moment for me today, but I thought I would check in and see how my pension is doing so far this year to date, especially after the news today about pension funds distress. Its mostly growth funds for me as I'm a fair way away from retirement so I was expecting the worst.

Its down 2% so far, which I guess is good news. A fair chunk of it is based in global properties so I guess the doom and gloom news hasn't quite filtered through to properties yet (plenty of time for that to happen still, right? )

Just wondering how others are doing so far. My summary page doesn't show performance that way, so I basically took the January statement, added the contributions so far this year and compared it to the live balance. Obviously, the live balance is lower than the Jan statement plus monthly contributions, hence the 2% drop I arrived at.

I'm fully expecting to be worse than 2% as the year goes on but what do you do? No point trying to be an expert and screwing it up even more.

[RizzoTheRat]

Yikes, my work one is showing -11% this year.
That's 40% bonds 60% equities and about half and half € and $.
Still a fair few years to retirement though so plenty of time for it to recover.

[mrmistoffelees]

In my SIPP, -0.99% on the rolling one year. Overall +42% so... meh. The bulk of my pension is in a DB though so it doesn't really bother me.

[Silenoz]

5% down in last 6 months as at today. Fortunately I also have a decent final salary element from a previous life so not too worried at this stage. Working on the theory that piling money in while the market is low will pay off when it recovers.

Edited by Silenoz on Wednesday 28th September 15:48

[RSbandit]

-8% ytd...makes little diff to me as can't get hold of it for a good while yet

[mike9009]

Main pension holding is about -9% over the last 12 months. Always makes scary reading, but not due to retire for 15 years. So plenty of time to lose it all.

[Hippea]

I’m in the Civil Service scheme…

[soupdragon1]

South park sketch sums up the current situation quite well

(I'm trying to figure out if I should put a laughing emoji or a crying one right now)

https://youtu.be/OtpwAg0KTeA

[Halitosis]

Down 17% over the last 12 months, and the final few months of 2021 was quite good if I recall, so since January mine must be down > 20%. So do I keep it in small cap and emerging markets hoping that both will rebound?

[Rick101]

20% down less contributions since Jan

Started taking a more active interest and am currently recording figures weekly!

[LeoSayer]

-5% YTD performance and the overall value is flat thanks to my contributions.

I'm solely invested in global equity index funds. They're priced in GBP and not currency hedged so I guess the strong dollar has limited the losses.

I'm only a few years from retirement and like an earlier post I have a final salary scheme which will cover around half my retirement income needs and give inflation protection so up until recently I haven't held any fixed income funds.

I know I should be holding bonds to mitigate against a large equity market drop and I currently have some cash waiting to be invested but I just can't bring myself buy a bond fund in the current environment.

[PrinceRupert]

-3.94% YTD

Not awful...

[dmahu]

Rick101 said:

20% down less contributions since Jan

Started taking a more active interest and am currently recording figures weekly!

What did you invest in?

US is down 20% but the fall in GBP offsets that so SP500 and the like are less than 5% down in GBP.

[dmahu]

I’m following a bury the head in the sand strategy. Looking just stresses me out so I’m going to try to stay away from market news and see where I am in January 2023 for tax return time.

[soupdragon1]

dmahu said:

I’m following a bury the head in the sand strategy. Looking just stresses me out so I’m going to try to stay away from market news and see where I am in January 2023 for tax return time.

That could be considered pretty sound financial advise when all is said and done. The other option is to tinker, but the way I look at that, is that you are stepping over the fund managers somewhat, and taking more ownership yourself. Which sort of means that you think you will do a better job that them.

If you're 100% equities for example and you are about to retire, or even have already retired, then that would maybe indicate you've got the wrong mix. However, assuming the mix of your pension is already set up correctly, relative to your age and risk profile, it can make a lot of sense to just do nothing.

[soupdragon1]

LeoSayer said:

-5% YTD performance and the overall value is flat thanks to my contributions.

I'm solely invested in global equity index funds. They're priced in GBP and not currency hedged so I guess the strong dollar has limited the losses.

I'm only a few years from retirement and like an earlier post I have a final salary scheme which will cover around half my retirement income needs and give inflation protection so up until recently I haven't held any fixed income funds.

I know I should be holding bonds to mitigate against a large equity market drop and I currently have some cash waiting to be invested but I just can't bring myself buy a bond fund in the current environment.

I've a small amount of corporate bonds in my pension, and the performance has been an absolute disaster this year. As the years pass by, I will automatically get more exposure to bonds but as a supposedly less volatile part of a pension package, the performance has been alarmingly bad.

Edit.

Pic to show how bad the corporate bonds have performed in 12 months

Edited by soupdragon1 on Thursday 29th September 10:20

[PM3]

YTD -9% Some people ignoring the title and talking about 12 months ...for me that would be -3.2%
about split 35/65 UK/US index passive
A little bit of shuffling earlier this year from UK to US markets ( passive index funds ) which, when I ran comparisons, has helped my situation probably because of plummeting GBP/USD

edit : Ignored my SIPP, that's -5% if I take out the tax contribution
Have a DB too as about 50% of what I plan as retirement funds . Retired , but not planning any drawdown for at least another 6 years so will be nervously watching later but do nothing for now

Edited by PM3 on Thursday 29th September 10:48

[drmotorsport]

YTD -6.58%. At least I won't need the cash for another 10 years or so.

[dingg]

-4.5%

It was a lot worse, weakness of gbp v usd has softened the damage...

[fat80b]

Including contributions, mine is just up on where it was Jan 1st but that dosesn't tell the full story. Removing contribs from the calculation, I am down 3.2% so arguably not too bad but still not the full story.....

As in there is also the fact that it has lost 4.4% in the last 30 days.......i.e. a month ago, I was up for the year and the last month it has taken a (relative) hammering.. ouch