Opinion

Christmas and New Year is my usual time to catch up on that enormous pile of ‘interesting stuff' that lies rotting in the corner of my office.

In the first week of December, Investment Week reported that M&G's Jim Leaviss believed there was a substantial chance there would be a downgrade by ratings agencies of UK government debt if there was no attempt to tackle the budget deficit.

One of my favourite activities at the end of any volatile year is to look at sectors that have failed to keep up with the pack.

Among the many Christmas cards received by Investment Week this year, the common theme has revolved around we are, without doubt, living in interesting times.

As it is the end of the year, I have been sorting out a lot of old bits of paper and came across an article in a consumer magazine Investors Week, which I edited at the beginning of the decade.

Over the last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time leafing through the details of the IMA's annual industry surveys in search of some big new trends.

So is it now more tax efficient to invest in a game of bingo than make a pension contribution or start an Isa?

London's financial community feels it is fighting a war on two fronts: the prospect of being hamstrung by pending EU measures and suffering targeted attacks from the government at home.

Investment Week Conjecture

I can take no credit for the following analogy - it is all the original work of one of the smartest sales and marketing directors in the asset management industry.