The sudden storm that could take down your investment portfolio

There are many things that threaten to put a big dent in your retirement savings. But the biggest right now is inflation, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Freshening clouds by Julius Olsson
Batten down the hatches, a storm could be coming
(Image credit: Getty)

In July 1881 a group of fishermen set out from Gloup, one of the most northerly villages on one of the UK’s most northerly islands, in small, six-oared sailing boats – deckless sixareens.

It didn’t go well. The number of fishing boats around the Shetland Islands had been steadily increasing – and, while a few decades earlier, all fishing took place within easy sight of land, the men now sometimes needed to head 40 miles out to get a good catch.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.