If you’d invested in: Pepper Food Service and Greene King

Pepper Food Service (Tokyo: 3053) operates franchise and directly run steak-restaurant chains throughout Japan. Shares in the firm have risen 924% since January, taking its market value to more than 120bn (£790m), compared with 12bn at the start of the year.

This saw it promoted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange second section to the first section. The firm is on course to end the year as the best-performing stock in the Topix index.

Be glad you didn't

Greene King (LSE: GNK) brews and sells beer as well as operating pubs across the UK. Its share price dived in September when the firm warned that sales from the pubs it manages directly had fallen by 1.2%. In November the group reported an 8% fall in half-year profits to £127.9m, a decrease it blamed on pub goers tightening their belts, as well as rivals slashing prices to offset disappointing weather.