For much of the past decade these quarterly reviews have contained references to the scourge of market and economic volatility, as we’ve been passing through an unusually disruptive investment and economic era. Thankfully, in 2017 volatility dissipated, (at least temporarily!). This quieter period can be illustrated by...

For a generation now, investors, regulators and consumers have been dealing with a monumental ‘unwind’ process, that sought to and succeeded in shaking the bane of inflation and high interest rates out of the global economic system. In more recent years these concerted and aggressive acts of governments and central banks have consequently pushed this fix-up barrow too far… So now we head into the another great unwind, the ‘normalisation’ phase where interest rates start to rise and inflation returns. But there’s a problem...

Most investment markets performed admirably in the last twelve months, particularly as economic trends have generally been uninspiring. Stock and real estate prices have certainly benefitted from the unprecedented stimulus provided by central banks and governments, in the form of extraordinarily low interest rates, and even more extraordinary money printing programs.