The decision of the Federal Reserve to turn on the printing presses will result in a re-run of the 1970s. For investors the best safe havens are hard assets, including gold – Keynes’ “barbarous relic”, writes Lincoln Rathnam.

Markets are positioned for something akin to the Great Depression. With so much doom and gloom in the air, now is the right time to buy equities.

Zombie banks are stalking the global economy, choking off credit to viable businesses. The solution, writes Lincoln Rathnam, is a straightforward separation of the good from the bad.

When structured products started turning into four-letter words, investors should have taken heed.

The US economy is far more resilient than some commentators think. The present crisis also creates an opportunity for the Treasury to help itself and many pension funds.

Markets are more susceptible to the herd mentality and the creation of bubbles because of agents’ behaviour. Following the money can solve a large part of the asset price puzzle.

MTF (that’s multilateral trading facilities to you and me) is about to become the acronym of the autumn, with umpteen new systems launching in Europe. It might be bad news for the incumbent exchanges; is it good news for anyone?

'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' is an excellent read, but anyone who talks about the credit crunch in these terms is not being intellectually honest.

Star money manager Bill Miller has framed the questions that the mainstream asset management industry must answer. Hedge funds will be rubbing their hands with glee.

With the euro hitting fresh record highs against the dollar, it must be tempting for European policymakers to crow. However, complacency could lead to crisis.

Much is made of Ben Bernanke’s academic work on the Great Depression. However, the Fed chairman seems to making policy with one eye on the recent Japanese debt deflation cycle.

Six months into a credit crunch there are few signs of an improving outlook for non-government bond markets. It is a signal equity investors would do well to heed.

Financial markets must adjust to an environment where credit is no longer cheap and abundant.

A US recession could be short, shallow and relatively benign for the rest of the world if oil price falls in 2008.

Rumours are rife that quant funds stumbled again in November. If they are to thrive in the future, they need to learn from these mistakes.

Sub-prime slime and the credit crunch have diverted attention from global imbalances. However, any dollar rout would be ugly. Neglect is no substitute for policy.

The only UK stock that tried to keep pace with the plummeting Northern Rock in September was Absolute Capital Management. This serves as a warning to all hedge fund investors of the importance of proper due diligence.

Hedge funds are in the news for all the wrong reasons. But strident calls for regulation are more than just wrong, they are downright dangerous. Financial markets need hedge funds more than ever.

It has been the ‘everybody has won and all must have prizes’ market so far in 2007. That phrase was uttered by a (fictional) Dodo. Now it is time for Darwinism to reassert itself.

There’s trouble brewing in the Chinese stock market. But a short, sharp shock could be just what is needed.

The smart money is already betting that the credit cycle is turning.

Buying into the IPO of a private equity company is like a game of pass the parcel in which someone has already made off with the prize. Those that choose to play will end up disappointed.

The bizarre decision by Moody’s to grant Aaa status to a rag-tag assortment of obscure Nordic credits has put the raters in the spotlight. The relationship between the rating agencies and the big investment banks should also come under scrutiny.

We are repeatedly told that financial markets are awash with liquidity. That is now less true and the ingenuity of modern finance means that liquidity is little more than a mirage.

There are sound reasons why volatility has fallen across asset classes. But a safe bet for 2007 is that it will rise again.

January is the month to purge the excesses of Christmas and New Year from the system. Detoxing won’t be so easy for the markets.

Investment banks are paying fancy prices to participate in the hedge fund boom. Is there method in this or is it madness?

The wilder shores of technical analysis never want for proponents and followers. So are there perhaps truths to be found in all this numerology? Or is it just a load of bloody offal?

The debt burden is a growing worry, not least because many of those that invest in the debt market’s increasingly ingeniously packaged instruments are themselves heavily leveraged.

Reports of the death of currencies as an asset class are surely exaggerated. Look for mean-reverting volatility to turn around the performance of currency funds.