Planning for the unknowable in 2017

There's plenty of unease as to what lies ahead this year, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But investors need not worry.

Worried about 2017? You aren't alone. Look at any of the lists of newspaper predictions for the year and you will see little but misery. There will be a trade war between the US and China. There will be a real war between the US (or Trump at least) and China, or Russia, or maybe North Korea. The eurozone will implode, prompting both a financial and a political crisis. Brenaissance (AKA Brexit) will backfire at huge cost to the UK economy. Inflation will surge. Overpriced markets will crash.

It's all awful. Unless you ignore the papers and look to the stockmarkets. There nothing particularly awful is happening, or expected to happen, at all. Last year ended just fine for most major markets (the FTSE 100 was up over 14%) and 2017 seems to be starting just fine too: the Nikkei closed up 2.5% in its first day of trading this year, for example.

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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.