The investment outlook for 2018

For DIY investors the obvious question is whether 2018 will live up to 2017 or whether we will see what feels like an almost inevitable and overdue correction. 80-20 Investor members will be familiar with my view that trying to predict the future is folly and fraught with dangers. You just have to go back to this time last year when I carried out a review of 2016 to see the lessons learned, one of which was the danger involved in crystal ball gazing.

As momentum investors we follow trends up (and indeed down) taking the emotion out of the investment process to increase the chances of success. The table below shows the performance of my £50,000 portfolio in 2017 versus a number of benchmarks:

Name Year to date % return My £50k portfolio 12.87 Average managed multi-asset fund 9.43 Passive benchmark 8.69

However there is no denying that other investors’ views and emotions do influence their decisions and investment markets and therefore to a certain degree our own returns.