A smartly dressed, thirty year old man boarded a train in New York city bound for the annual general meeting of the Northern Pipeline company; it was a little odd, to say the least, that the AGM would be held in Oil City, a small town in Pennsylvania, almost 400 miles from where its headquarters were located, just blocks away from Wall Street.

2018 was a perplexing year for investment markets, having started apprehensively due to economic growth and rising interest rates concerns, which was then followed by a benign mid-year period of greater optimism and growth, that ended abruptly in the final quarter. By year-end markets of all types - stocks, bonds and currencies - were experiencing heightened investor agitation and volatility.