Pension freedoms are being compromised

British people make up one of the highest percentages of expats in the world, it is estimated by the World Bank that between 4.5 million and 5.5 million Britons live abroad – around 7-8% of the UK population. Spain has become a firm favourite for people choosing to settle down overseas.

The United Nations Population Division found that over 381,025 official British expats were in Spain during 2013, with even more who are unofficially living ‘under the radar.’

At time of writing, global stockmarkets have witnessed some of the largest daily fluctuations since the financial crisis; on the back of continued concerns with the virus and how long it will last and the impact on the global economy.

For new investors this can be extremely worrying times as you will not have been used to such short-term volatility. For seasoned investors who went through the financial crisis of 2008, the technology bubble of 2000 and even black Monday in 1987, the short term pain being witnessed is often seen as a confirmation that although stockmarkets can’t always go up, over the long term, they always have done so.   With this in mind, it is important to remain calm and not change your investment time horizon. If for example you are saving for your retirement ten years from now; then maintain that timescale and don’t panic sell on the back of a matter of weeks of market downturns. The reason for this is that the coronavirus is an unforeseen event as opposed to their being any change to market fundamentals. Parallels can be drawn with the SARS outbreak in 2003. Markets fell over 14% at that time, yet the year ended up 18% higher – a swing of over 30% from bottom to top.