Year review: Markets have been 'anything but normal' in 2016

Ian Kenny, head of fixed income at Smith & Williamson, reflects on how globalisation and growing debt levels have impacted the bond markets over the past ten months.

Stock and bond indices have no memory but, because they are organic, markets evolve all the time, so as the end of 2016 looms into view it is perhaps worth considering what, if anything, the year has taught us.  Like so many other recent years, 2016 began with hopes of 'normalisation' but the reality; growing nationalism in Europe and much of the developed world, the political and economic chaos unleashed by Brexit and the slump in the pound (to name but three) has felt anything but normal.  Perhaps the biggest lesson of 2016 - if there is one - is that the long march of globalisation...