I've come to Liverpool today to tell you about
this tale of retirement redemption. So I'm stood
here in front of the famous Jack Aranda music
pub in the heart of Liverpool. This is where
it's happened. Somewhere very similar. There's
similar places scattered across the UK where
similar redemption stories are also happening.
So who received our retirement redemption? His
name's Mark. Mark was always professional. To
be honest, he was professional when he was 10.
Problem is, at age 10, being professional is
not an advantage. It just makes you a target.
Later on in life, it was an advantage. Mark.
with a nice house nice car 2 .2 kids mark was
always the expert in the room now even when he
wasn't so when mark had a look at his pension
work he was a bit frustrated with the fact he
couldn't really get his hands in there and move
things around as much as he'd like so he decided
to open a sip of self -invested personal pension
and he transferred quite a lot of cash into it
and also a fair amount of his monthly salary
went in there as well and once he got to grips
with the controls in there he was flying he absolutely
loved the platform threw almost everything he
had in there into tech stocks, including Peloton,
believe it or not. But it paid off. Five years
later, 57, he had so much in his sip, he decided
he deserved to retire. This is for two reasons.
He retired because, A, he'd made enough money
over them five years that he could afford to
retire early. And secondly, he wanted to spend
more time focusing on the charts and the stocks
within his self -invested personal pension. So
he leaves corporate life behind and he thinks
he's solved the game of life, really. That leisure
time he's bought himself. was mostly spent staying
on a chart, convinced himself that this is his
new profession. Forums, YouTube, trading gurus,
the lot. But you know, the psychological transition
from investing to trading to gambling, it can
be quite subtle. It's quite hard to spot the
edges when you're embroiled in it all. If we
look at the early investors in Peloton, they
weren't just buying a bike. They were buying
into this belief that the world had permanently
changed. It represented a conviction that leads
a character like Mark to actually start feeling
invincible. Then there's the emotional weight
of it all because the climb was so quick. It
provided a painful contrast for you know a character
who's struggling to accept that his original
investment thesis is now actually dead market
corrections happen instead of cutting losses
what he does is mark doubles down he views the
markets as this enemy owes him. He's going to
get it back. When the stock market stops providing
this kind of rush, he makes a pivot. He makes
a pivot to horse racing. He's not actually looking
for financial growth anymore. He's looking for
that dopamine hit of a win. to validate his earlier
successes to confirm that actually he is an expert
this time an expert in horses racing around the
track what he also started to do was hide his
hobby from his wife the shame of Losing this
hard -earned pension starts to create a wall
between him and the people he loves. As often
happens in these cases, a breaking point comes
and this was a particular horse race. He'd been
at Chester races and decided, against his best
judgement, that the only way out was to put the
lot on a favourite. As you can guess, the favourite
didn't win. This is the moment where he was forced
to face the reality of his finances and the emptiness
of this pursuit he'd given an enjoyable career
up for. and for what to have lost a significant
part of his pension he's very vulnerable so it's
back to the jacaranda and while he's there he
bumps into an old friend college friend actually
almost 30 years since he'd last seen her and
she was up on stage playing acoustic guitar and
when they were back at college they did used
to jam a bit and Mark was pretty good with piano
back then. They got chatting away and she invited
him to come over to a jam session where Him and
a couple of other friends were playing some jazz
tunes. So next week he became really distracted.
He wasn't spending any time at all really looking
at his pension pot, his sip. He was spending
time sitting in front of the piano trying to
unlock his fingers to become a bit more fluent.
I'm trying to remember those chords on the Hammond
organ he'd managed to keep. Anyway, a couple
of practices in and he falls in love with playing
again. He's reclaimed his focus. This is not
about numbers in the stock market. This is a
challenge though. It's the challenge of music.
He's not going to get rich. He's got no intention
of trying to play for money. But he feels like
he's won and this is the recovery of agency,
of his control, of his connection. He realises
that while he couldn't control the market, he
can control his fingers on the piano. He can
control the music. Mark spent most of his professional
career trying to control complex systems. Music
represents a form of expression where he must
learn to let go and listen, not to control every
parameter. So is this story of redemption heading
towards a person finding their true calling?
Or is it about the loss of a corporate identity
and what that can do to a person? Or is it generally
about bad decision making? And the danger in
Mark's mind is that he equates his previous stock
success with skill. When things go wrong, he
doesn't see the failure, he sees a miscalculation.
And this is a miscalculation that he thinks can
be corrected with more data and more risk. He
feels that any loss is just a temporary dip.
Fundamentals haven't changed. It's just a dip.
And this prof set with another gamble by Tuesday.
In fact, for him, it's not gambling. He's crunched
the numbers. It's just aggressive reallocation
based on his facts. Now, there is an older trail
of Mark's fall into despair. He documented most
of his actions on his Twitter account. One particular
one that stood out for me, he says, I used to
run multi -million pound projects. I handled
stakeholders, budgets and deadlines. Now I'm
sweating over a three furlong sprint on a Tuesday
afternoon. How did the gap between the man I
was and the man I become become such a chasm?
A major source of tension for him was the secrecy.
His wife's questions about their account balances
or his sudden mood swings. I can bet she's thinking,
I'm working, I'm working on fixing the mess that
he's made. That's worse when she says nothing.
Because silence is louder than any shouting.
So Mark's redemption. It's not about him recovering
his losses. But it is a redemption. It's a redemption
because Mark came to understand that he could
enjoy himself and be an active member of his
family without the bells and whistles of a fast
car. Mark's wife was really happy to see the
new Mark. The new Mark was confident without
being stressed. He was spending time on a passion
he'd always loved. And he was no longer spending
time sitting in front of his spreadsheets and
his charts. But Mark became a happier person.
The whole family became a happier home. So, if
there is a lesson to be learned from Mark's redemption,
it's that retirement remains about connections.
It's not all about sips and defined benefits
and defined contributions. It comes down to people.
It comes down to being happy. Thanks for listening.
I'll see you on the next one.