By the skin of my teeth...,

Last Monday, 15th May, I had an inkling that all was not well in the worldwide money and share markets. I had noted a slight but significant fall in the entire group of mutual funds where I have my small long term pension savings. It was not as if one or two of the funds were dropping, but all of them were showing the same signs.

The pension amount is not very much, but enough to give me a small additional pension to my state pension in a couple of years.

When I went into this private pension saving system many years ago, the stocks fell so that my initial investment was actually almost halved. But, I stayed in the funds and over the last 3 years the value first equalled and went above my initial investment.

So, at this juncture, when I am about to cash in on this pension, I did not want to take a chance, as I am not going to wait another 4 to 5 years to recover any substantial losses.

As I looked a little deeper into the world markets last Monday evening, I saw in the figures around the globe that something radical was happening in the share markets. First thing on Tuesday morning, I called my financial adviser in my bank and asked her to move my whole pension funds into a safe fixed interest account. Since I have had this pension fund for many years, I can transfer freely without incurring any cost.

I was out the whole day, so when my adviser called Annikki, she said that if she did not hear from me by 15:00 hours she would carry out my instructions.

I got home after 15:00 and found an email from her telling me that she had executed my request. Luckily, I had not had a chance to reconsider my decision.

The following week has seen share markets around the world in a nose-dive, with trading on the Mumbai exchange being halted for a period yesterday after the BSE fell 1100 points from above 10,800 - but it seemed to have recovered 654 points during the day. (I do not have any investment in the Indian share market.)

During the last week Helsinki fell 12.5%, Frankfurt fell by 9.1%, Tokyo fell by 8.3%, and Paris by 7.9%. London fell by 7.8% while New York fell by 4.9% but I had moved out of all UK and US Stocks and Shares as a protest after these Governments illegally invaded and occupied Iraq.

It is interesting to see how the OMX Helsinki behaved since last Monday:

Monday: 9400
Tuesday: 9400 (Here is when I moved from the market to fixed interest)
Wednesday: 9800 (+400 from Tuesday)
Thursday: 9500 (+100 from Tuesday)
Friday: 9600 (+200 from Tuesday)
Saturday: 9000 (-400 from Tuesday)
Sunday: 8400 (-1000 from Tuesday)

I had stopped the loss of my small investment by the skin of my teeth.

As my present investment value is above what I originally invested, and although I will get just 2.5% p.a. return, it is better than a possible 30% loss which I see ahead in the general fund market!