Bleak and bruising: 2018 in investments
It has been a rocky year for investors around the world. Here is our run through of the glorious highs and crushing lows and hesitant outlook for 2019.
It is hard – amid the doom and gloom of the worst year-end for global stock markets since 2008 – to remember that 2018 started sunny. In January, investors had side-lined concerns of political turbulence and seemed to agree that stretched valuations in the tech sector were justified by quality – something that was worryingly lacking during the dot-com boom and bust. True, UK returns were pedestrian (at best), but aside from a brief blip in February, the pattern of growth which has characterised global investment returns for the last decade, remained at full throttle until August. Even the creeping…