How to invest as we move into a new era

As we move away from pandemic panic and into world of risk acceptance, higher energy prices and higher interest rates, your priority as an investor should be to protect the real value of your assets.

Electricity meter, bill and a handful of £20 notes
Your electricity meter might spring a nasty surprise
(Image credit: © Alamy)

January is a time for resolutions – and most of us can think of very necessary financial resolutions aplenty. But rather than focus on any one quick fix, this might be the year to remember the actual point of saving and investing. It is not the accumulation for the sake of accumulation. It is to buy choice: choice over when and how you work, choice over how you live, and choice over when you retire – to buy you flexibility and freedom. You build wealth now so you can use it later. That’s all.

This means that your core financial priority should usually be protecting the “real” value of the assets (and hence the financial freedom) you already have. I mention it this year in particular, because this is not going to be straightforward in 2022. We are in a transition phase in almost every way. We are shifting from endless pandemic panic and knee-jerk “something must be done” policy-making to a new era of risk acceptance, from an era of cheap energy to the opposite, from one of very low interest rates to one of rising rates and – possibly – from one where capital holds all the cards to one where a fast-rising dependency ratio means labour holds at least some of them.

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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.