 A lot of new clients who come to meet Lighthouse Financial Advisers get worried when they hear that they will be invested in the most diversified companies around Australia and the world.
 “Should we get out now and come back in when things settle down?” is a question that usually finds its way into investment conversations when the value of one’s investment has dropped.
 When we see our superannuation, balance rise and fall due to volatility, we as humans instinctively think that there’s something wrong and feel that we have done the wrong thing by putting ourselves in that situation.
 We are currently in a time of global uncertainty; we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and a significant drop in the investment market that hasn’t been experienced for years.
So, what does this mean for us as a business?  The week of 28 February 2020 the ASX200 had dropped by around 10%. This has taken many people by surprise. But should it?
 Often people invest based on a prediction the price of their chosen asset will eventually rise.
This must be the case, otherwise they’d just wait until the price drops to buy. Their predictions are usually based on a range of information sources, some credible, some not. But is it possible this information is already factored into the price?  When planning for retirement, everyone can agree that it makes sense to minimise risk.
It sounds like one of those things that no one can possibly disagree with. However, ‘risk’ is one of those words that can mean many different things. So, in this series of articles, I want to break down the various types of risk that can affect retirement planning.  “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.” – Peter Lynch
 In 1990 the forward thinking Norwegian government established the Government Pension Fund of Norway (also known as the Oil Fund) to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. The purpose of the fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector, mainly from taxes of petroleum companies but also payment for licenses to explore for oil as well as the State’s Direct Financial Interest and dividends from the partly state-owned Equinor. Current revenue from the petroleum sector is estimated to be at its peak and is envisaged to decline in the future decades. The Oil Fund was established to counter the effects of the forthcoming decline in income, as the oil reserves eventually run out completely, and to smooth out the disruptive effects of highly fluctuating oil prices.
 The Dutch East India Co. was the world’s first corporate powerhouse and laid the foundations for the modern multinational corporations of today. However, they are often remembered for trading away New York City. In 1667 the Dutch, whom at the time had occupied New Amsterdam (now New York), conceded the island of Manhattan (now New York) to the English in return for the tiny island of Run in the Banda Islands of the Moluccas Indonesia. The English promptly changed the name from New Amsterdam to New York. Why did they make this trade? Firstly, some background on the Dutch East India Co.
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