Markets no longer listening to central banks 'crying wolf'

Small caps seem to be an immediate turn off to a lot of investors, with fixations on aggregate valuations and volatility meaning the better risk-adjusted returns that can be made within this asset class are often overlooked.

Largest IA funds surpass £15bn each

Simon Gergel, manager of the Merchants investment trust, forecasts a much tighter oil market this year and beyond, with a return to higher prices at some point.

The New Year started, as always, with a flurry of forecasts for the next 12 months. But with equity markets having one of their worst starts, a number of commentators have not had to wait as long as usual for some of their forecasts to look a touch optimistic....

China's 'new economy', focused on consumer demand and the service sectors, is accelerating.

The FTSE ET 100 returned 5% versus the MSCI All Countries World index, which advanced 3.3%, in 2015 rounding off what was a successful year for environment markets.

If the recent sell-off can be attributed to any single factor, it has been events in China - and particularly its currency.

When Abenomics was launched and large-scale QE introduced to much fanfare a few years ago, the bold message communicated was we could expect monetary policy easing on a scale not previously seen.

UK indices have been caught in the eye of the storm and are down more than 8% since the start of the year at the time of writing.