Last year, every investment fund and their dog were bringing in respectable returns.
This year is different. If you’ve looked at your quarterly investment returns from your investments for your pension fund or just pure investments, you’ll see that in the first quarter of 2026, the down economy here in South Africa and globally is impacting returns.
Some returns are about, in the first quarter, 1.6%, which is pretty low. You can expect this with all the volatility in local and global markets, yet some believe that overall for the year 2026, the upside might be double digits or just over double digits, and then the downside could be as low as between 1 to 5%.
For those investors and pensioners struggling with rising costs on all fronts, including electricity, water, rates, and taxes, fuel costs, food costs, and especially medical insurance costs as well as all other forms of insurance, the outlook doesn’t look good.
What can you do about it? Well, as we know, when performance is bad and economies are down and investments are also down, belt tightening is required.
It’s something to consider, perhaps avoiding major expenses at this time unless they’re going to benefit you in the long run.
Others, by the way, might need to be making those. purchases because they’re transitioning to retirement or moving elsewhere in the country.
But the main idea is don’t wait for a shock at the end of the year when investment performance is low and you’re going to be even harder hit if you were overspending.
