So 2019 has been an amazing year for investors and it's been an amazing year in many other respects as well, or there's been lots of lessons for investors to learn this year.
What you've had is a contrast between incredible capital market returns, stocks have done well, bonds have done well, almost everything has done well.
And that's contrasted with an economy which has been fairly lacklustre.
People have been worrying about the next recession, and still are to a certain extent.
So it shows in some way how important it is for investors to tune out noise about forecasting recessions and all those kind of things and actually just be on the pitch, that's the main lesson from this year.
The other less I guess is also one that's been persistent from this economic cycle and one that we can carry into next year and really that's we've got to find good reasons to bet against the global economy.
Growth is the norm not the exception, you should be bored of hearing us say that, but as we look into the next year (2020) the risks of a recession are actually receding a little bit.
You're finding that the world's manufacturing sector is kind of groggily coming to its feet, coming to a little bit as we speak, and you should find that some governments around the world loosen their wallets a little bit particularly in Europe.
And set alongside that you've got interest rates, monetary conditions in very stimulative territory, so our suspicion is that this elongated economic cycle has got further to run yet.
That doesn't mean that you can expect the same again this year.
Our suspicion is that you can expect lower returns going forward for this year and that's probably because profits growth is going to be pretty meagre and quite a lot of the returns you've experienced in stocks this year have been from valuation expansion which probably hasn't got further room to run as we look into next year in our opinion.
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