Six essential investments for 2007

A balanced long-term investment portfolio should include exposure to all of the following areas and themes, argues the Daily Telegraph's Tom Stevenson:

- A global fund to provide breadth, with added performance from a high-yielding portfolio using a formulaic selection method.

- A stake in commercial property where value can still be found (for example in Germany).

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- Invest in the Asian century. Japan looks the current low-risk play, but when there is less "froth" in the market, India looks like being the best 20-year economic growth story.

- Short-term gold as a hedge against depreciation of the dollar, US bonds to benefit from the threat of a recession there this year.

- Commodities for the long term, as "feeding, clothing, heating, housing and transporting an enlarged developed world will put enormous strain on the world's raw materials."

- And climate change "an opportunity as well as a threat the momentum in this area is now unstoppable."

By MartinSpring in On Target, a private newsletter on global strategy