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"Moreover, the LCP analysis reveals that between 10 March and 18 March, debt-market volatility and rising interest rates wiped some £150bn (€167bn) from the total pension liabilities as investors sought shelter in fixed income."

I struggled to get my head around that: if "investors sought shelter in fixed income", surely prices are (ceteris paribus) likely to rise and yields, therefore, fall? Or am I incorrectly conflating yields and interest rates?

The source report (which you kindly linked to), states: "The key IAS19 accounting assumption is the discount rate and this too has seen unprecedented market movements since the start of 2020. Over eight days in March 2020, IAS19 discount rates increased by around 1.5% pa which, all else equal, corresponds to a c30% or £150bn drop in FTSE100 pension liabilities. This increase was driven by rising credit spreads (the difference between corporate and government bond yields) which, as shown in the chart below, spiked at c1.8% pa in mid-March."

Having looked more generally at the source report, I'm wondering if your statement that "investors sought shelter in fixed income" could have been written more accurately as: "investors sought shelter in government bonds" (e.g. "fixed income" could refer to corporate bonds)?

Apologies if I'm being pedantic (or wrong), but I did generally struggle with the reference to "fixed income".

It's good to see IPE still up and running during the pandemic and I hope everyone is managing to stay as safe as possible: the first rule of pension club is to live long enough to draw one.

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