What lies beneath

Surveying the wreckage of markets in 2018, it is human and therefore tempting to put the more optimistic (contrarian ?) case for the year ahead. But our job for the medium term is to protect and grow our investors’ capital, not to be optimistic simply for optimism’s sake. 2018 was an annus horribilis not just on account of the severity of certain market declines, but on account of the universality of those declines. No major market was spared. Apparently, and seemingly uniquely, the Qatari stock index managed to put in a positive return for the year as a whole. Perhaps we should all seek to be embargoed by Saudi Arabia. The extent of the pain is clearly visible in the table below, more extraordinary since it was unaccompanied by the sort of explicit narratives that bombarded investors during a year like 2008..

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