Kepler Partners' William Heathcoat Amory: Protecting portfolios from equity market volatility

'More choppy waters ahead'

Feeling like Nick Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I returned from a family holiday in Scotland as if waking from a dream, learning that we had had an equity market crash and a recovery, all within the space of two weeks.

Indeed, looking at share prices now, they seem eerily similar to a fortnight ago. Can it all have been a mid-summer night's dream? This year, aside from the steady upward trajectory of artificial intelligence-related stocks, one of the most interesting graphs has been the progressively lower trajectory of Vix – the market's 'fear gauge', as the press likes to describe it. Friday Briefing: Soft landing prospects brighten again In many ways, this year has reflected investors' apathy toward equity risk. These risks became readily apparent in early August, with fears of a US recessi...