In the last two days, stock markets have lost $5.4 trillion in value. The seven largest U.S. technology stocks account for a third of that fall. Pension funds investing in U.S. index funds have suffered particularly badly, with three-month returns down 16 percent in some cases, according to the ETV news show "Aktuaalne kaamera."

Only four out of 26 funds have reported a positive return in the last three months. The largest pension fund, Swedbank 1970-79, has a negative return of almost 14 percent over this period. Pertti Rahnel, portfolio manager of Swedbank's pension funds, said that the U.S. itself will be able to reemerge from this shock the fastest.

"What is the alternative at the moment? The U.S. market is the most fluid, the biggest market with the highest quality companies. And even though the U.S. is where this problem started, paradoxically the U.S. actually often does better than other markets in these situations," Rahnel said.

According to Vahur Vallistu, head of LHV Asset Management, the three-month return of LHV L, the second largest pension fund, is also slightly in the negative.

"Our goal is still to make returns at every market moment. We are also not happy with the numbers that have fallen a bit in the last week. European equities, or the equity positions that we have, are down almost twice as much as in the U.S.. The other thing is, of course, the impact of the dollar. The dollar has also fallen quite a lot against the euro in light of this same turmoil, and we have hedged against that risk ourselves," Vallistu said.

As pensions are accumulated over decades, pension savers should still look at long-term rather than short-term returns, Vallistu said.

Peter Priisalm, partner at Avaron, said it was difficult to predict when stock markets would rise again and pension funds become more profitable.

"What we can hope for is that if the impact of the tariffs is now to some extent transmitted from the stock markets to the real economy, that at some point Donald Trump will do a U-turn, or at least a 45-degree turn, and start to optimize the tariffs," Priisalm said.

At the same time, the impact of U.S. tariffs will not be as big as it was during the Covid crisis, when the economy was in complete turmoil, Priisalm said.

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