Equity investors get gloomy message at last

Sell in May and go away, it used to be said. This would not have been a particularly lucrative investing strategy in the past 20 years or so, but you could have done worse than follow its simplistic prescription this year. Depending on exactly when you sold in May and what you had done with the cash, you might now be one of the few investors with a smile on your face as you contemplate the second half of this annus horribilis. For all the talk of global depression, until two months ago the equity market was the dog that hadn't barked in the great US financial crisis. After almost a year of constant bad news - slumping house prices, collapsing banks, surging oil and food costs, plummeting consumer confidence - stocks actually prospered somewhat. On August 16 last year, after the sub-prime crisis had just started to invade the... [read full story]