Cliff Taylor: Five reasons to keep calm and carry on despite market turmoil

1. Concerns about growth. It started with fears about China, but this has now spread, with doubts in particular about the real health of the US economy, now well into an economic recovery, albeit one which has never gathered a lot of steam. The short-term outlook for the Irish economy remains good, but slower growth internationally would hit our prospects.The rising value of the euro, especially against the US dollar, will also make life a little harder for our exporters.

2. There are fears about the European banking system. Despite reassurances from bank chiefs in big institutions like Deutsche and Credit Suisse, markets continue to speculate that the financial system is under strain and that cracks will appear. The trouble is that no-one is quite sure where, or what form this will take. As we saw in 2008, troubles in the financial system can quickly spread.

3. The threat of spreading instability. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen. Ireland raised long-term borrowings at under 1 per cent this morning, a record low and another boost to our public finances. For the moment all is calm here. However look at Portugal where political instability and economic uncertainty have sent long-term bond interest rates up to 3.8 per cent or so this morning. And this is with the ECB in the market heavily buying government debt.

4. Your savings. The return available on savings is rock bottom. And it is going to stay there. The low interest rate environment was highlighted by a decision by the Swedish central bank today to cut its key interest rate to minus 0.5 per cent. Yes, minus. There will be no reasonable return for putting money in the bank in the foreseeable future but then again there isn’t much inflation to worry about either.

5. Your pension fund. Probably not worth worrying too much about this as markets ebb and flow, but the strong returns that supported pension funds for the last three or four years have turned into nasty losses.