Just bluster?

General Sir Gregor MacGregor orchestrated one of the most audacious scams in history – marvellous in its ambition and catastrophic in its consequences.

This has been the allocation of choice for traditional balanced portfolios and has served investors well for the past 50 years. Is this all about to change and should investors be looking for something different?

A talent for deception.

The story of an economic gear shift which sent post-war Britain careering around country lanes, before skidding on an oil slick and being sent ditchward. There it was left, engine smoking, entangled in the brambles of inflation. It wasn’t until 1980 that road-side recovery eventually arrived in the shape of Paul Volcker and his inflation curbing toolkit.

The response to this economic crisis has moved away from the old monetary regime to one where fiscal policy has become more important.

Traditional finance theory tells us that markets are rational. Investors incorporate all public and private information when making their investment decisions. This school of thought is grappling with the field of behavioural finance, which asserts that human psychology and biases also act in an irrational way to influence these same investment decisions.