Neptune's Smith: Will the FTSE end the year higher?

Neptune's Jeremy Smith wonders whether the FTSE All Share will finish 2010 higher than it was at the start of the year.

Returns for 2009 could not have been more different than those from 2008. After starting the year expecting a multi-year depression, the stock market delivered one of its best returns with the FTSE All-Share Index rising 30.1%. It was a year that started with us falling ever deeper into recession, but ended with a marginally positive GDP outcome of 0.1% growth for the final quarter of 2009. However, year-to-date, the market is down some 4% so far. This seems somewhat ironic given we are currently focused on how quickly the economy will recover from recession, not how long the recession w...