No end yet to the misery

You might think that our credit crisis and consequent bear market can’t possibly last as long as Japan's in the early 1990s. But why not?

For a few days it looked like what Daniel Gross of Newsweek calls the "Great Global Market Freak Out" might be over. But it isn't.

After a few days of relative tranquillity the bad numbers started coming again and the markets reacted accordingly: my very publicly claimed favourite index, the Nikkei (which I am not feeling that friendly towards any more), managed to lose 4.7% on Tuesday alone and the FTSE 100 lost 2.63%. It is now down 9% this year.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.