Japan

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Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) is spending to scoop up some of the world's least popular assets.

Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has started the year overweight equities in expectation of a continuing market rally in 2010.

Japan's economic recovery has proved to be anaemic in 2009 and it is a great surprise the market has underperformed its Western counterparts and the Asian markets.

Gartmore plans to merge its £23.6m Japan Opportunities fund into its new Japan Absolute Return fund.

Over the course of the year, the Japanese stock market has continued to rise from its March low point, helped by a general improvement in investors' risk appetite and the release of more positive economic data.

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Japan's newly elected Democratic Party has agreed a ¥7.2trn (£48bn) stimulus package to prevent the country's economy sliding back into recession.

With the end of the recession in sight, investors in the US need to be wary of the example of Japan's markets in the 1990s and beware of broad-based economic deflation

Aberdeen Asset Management's Hugh Young continues to be heavily underweight Japan, despite the country enjoying its fastest period of growth for over two years.