Retirees who want to gamble with their nest egg or try to time the market are among the worst clients financial advisers have worked with this year.

Going against her financial planner's advice, a 68-year-old retiree with a portfolio of only R3m and no family to depend on, took a third of her money to give to an offshore outfit that claimed to be trading in bitcoin. She instructed her financial planner, Gerrit Viljoen of Ultima, to withdraw R1m from her unit trust portfolio, which has delivered a return of only 7.3% over the past five years...