Ross Clark Ross Clark

What will happen to your savings after coronavirus?

What joy it has been to have some cash over the past two months. For gamblers, to be sure, there have been opportunities to take advantage of a volatile stock market (and even more opportunities to get it wrong and lose a packet). But cash is cash – it just sits there holding its value, without having to watch the markets with dread every day.

Well, certainly over the short term. But history teaches us a painful lesson in these circumstances: while investing in stock markets is full of sorrows, investing in cash offers few pleasures. It is ordinary savers ultimately who were made to pay for the economic crisis of 2008/09, and doubtless it will be they who are made to pay for this crisis, too.

Cash hasn’t been all that steady over the past two months, in any case.

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