Last year's key call was to spot the indebtedness of peripheral European governments and go underweight quickly. Those who did prospered all year, but in January of this year they got a nasty shock as peripheral spreads came rattling in and peripheral financials bounced...

It is always sobering when one of this writer's year-ahead predictions appears obsolete after only a few days. And it was only last week that his belief that policy may remain easy during 2011 already started to be questioned

We are not convinced we have seen the end of deleveraging and thus are sceptical that equity markets are cheap...