The year is off to a mediocre start for shares, and in London, unlike New York, there was not much of a Santa rally.
Big tech America is particularly hard hit, with the biggest enterprise of all, Apple, now worth $2.85 trillion (£2.25 trillion), down from $3 trillion three weeks ago.
But here, the FTSE 100 index shuffles sideways, as it has done for much of this century, unloved by British institutional investors and reliant on foreign buyers to prop it up. So another year of lacklustre performance?
Well, my own target is the Footsie will reach a new high of 8,500, as the value it offers will increasingly be recognised. Supposing that proves premature, remember the power of the dividend. Even if capital values were to move sideways, it offers a dividend yield of close to 4 per cent, more than double that of the S&P 500.
Indeed, if you factor in dividends, the long-term performance of London-quoted companies looks much closer to that of…
