Older and Poorer - A Year of Credit Crunch Pain

Complacency ruled and, as usual, trend extrapolation was the favoured predictive tactic of the fund management industry so equities, property, private equity, leveraged loans, leveraged anything in fact, high yield debt, commodities, the carry trade in currencies, and ‘Chindia’ were very much the flavour of the month. House price falls of 20%? – You must be mad! A year on we have suffered the worst financial market conditions for a generation and following a truly ghastly June we are now witnessing annual returns for many investors that will be in double figures. So who have been the rea...