Saying Goodbye to 2016 We are about to close the book on 2016 and it is time to reflect on what has been a difficult year for global financial markets. We have seen our fair share of scary headlines and doomsday predictions, but the actual results for the year might surprise you. A Rocky Start 2016 kicked off with a bang. U.S. stock markets opened with their worst five-day start to a year, ever. The Dow dropped 6.2%, the S&P 500 fell 6%, and the Nasdaq dropped 7.3% in the first five trading days of the year. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) issued a pessimistic report warning of worse times to come. So reads a headline from The Guardian on January 12th: Sell everything ahead of stock market
Taking the opportunity of the recent UK autumn statement which is the first budget statement after the referendum to leave the EU. The forecasts stem mostly from the Office for Budget Responsibility and they were more pessimistic on the short to medium term prospects of the UK economy. Although the OBR only made modest adjustments, the earlier objectives of reaching fiscal balance and even a surplus and reduce government debt have been scrapped by the new government. The biggest long-term consequence of the financial crisis is that the UK is much poorer than expected. The UK economy is a fifth or a sixth smaller than might have been expected before the crisis. Today the UK economy 10% GDP lo
