What we do when markets fall

Not much, and that is the point. The decisions that carry a portfolio through a bad year were taken in a calm one: the risk level you agreed, the cash you hold outside the portfolio, and the date you actually need the money.

When markets drop, three things happen here. We check that clients drawing an income have at least two years of it held in cash or short-dated bonds, so nothing has to be sold at the bottom. We rebalance where the fall has pushed a portfolio away from its agreed mix. And we phone the clients most likely to be worried, before they phone us.

What we do not do is change the plan because of a headline. A portfolio built around a thirty-year model does not need a new strategy in a quarter that has gone badly. If the plan only worked in rising markets, it was never a plan.

The awkward truth is that falls are the price of the returns that make the model work at all. We say this at the first meeting, in writing, because it is easier to agree to in advance than in the middle.

If your circumstances have genuinely changed, that is a different conversation and worth having straight away. A bad month is not a changed circumstance.