Investment comment
First Quarter 2008
Economic and Market Background
Confidence in financial markets remained brittle during the closing months of 2007 as a constellation of concerns continued to unsettle investors. Further tribulations in credit and money markets, to which the unbridled expansion of US sub-prime-mortage debt gave rise, were the source of much angst, but fears grew too about worsening economic conditions more generally in the leading industrialized nations (and in the United States in particular), with rates of economic growth appearing to decline in all the major economic regions and rates of inflation increasing. During the final quarter of the year, bond and gold prices rose, but equity markets struggled to make headway.
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