Volatile markets fuel savers' anxiety over value of pensions

Some have seen pots lose tens of thousands, report Jedidajah Otte and Alfie Packham

- Jedidajah Otte and Alfie Packham

Fraser, 63, a retiree from Essex, had been planning to leave his £140,000 pension pot invested in stocks and shares, only cashing out monthly gains to tide him over financially to state pension age.

"I was trying to only take the cream off the top, anything above £140,000. Every month in recent years, I've taken between £2,500 and £3,000 out to live off it. Then, at 67, I could have bought a decent annuity. It was fine, until the tariffs on Trump's 'liberation day'.

Within a few days, Fraser's pension pot had lost £32,000 in value, a drop of nearly 23%. The markets reversed some of their losses after Trump paused most of his “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days on Wednesday, but have been volatile amid the tit-for-tat trade war between Washington and Beijing and are still well down on the start of the month.

Although this had not been the first market shock Fraser's retirement savings had been exposed to, the impact on his savings was so severe that he has been thinking about returning to work.

Having made total contributions of £198,000 to his pension over 30 years, Fraser’s stock market investments have netted him more than £50,000 in just three years. Even though Liz Truss’s mini-budget and Trump's tariffs have reduced these returns sharply, his overall gains are still substantial.