Sorry to hear about your loss…..

Another great note from Tim Price recently: “The recovery in asset prices from their March 2009 lows has the smack of psychological as much as fundamental support. Having seen world equity markets fall by roughly 60% between October 2007 and March 2009, investors evidently decided they could only tolerate so much grief. And as if weeping from a financial bereavement, investors seem to have rotated through the initial Kuble-Ross stages of grief, from denial, through anger - at bankers and politicians - to a crude form of bargaining ("I'll accept these losses if the market rallies from here"). But if asset prices and notably equities turn back down and re-test their March 2009 trough, the next stage to come for investors could be depression, in which they confront the reality and inevitability of their losses and their own inability to affect them. ……

what lies ahead in 20I0?  With political risk rising in the general environment, it makes sense to try and minimize it within portfolios. The supposedly riskless characteristics of UK (and US) government bonds will be sorely tested in the months ahead. We see the prospect of better returns over the medium term, with reduced risk, in high quality non G7 sovereign debt. It seems likely that with markets anticipating the slowdown or reversal of quantitative easing, downside volatility could return with a vengeance to equity markets this year, another argument, if any were needed, in favour of defensive and higher yielding equities. This would also be consistent with any fears of a double-dip recession as the economy is nudged back toward self-reliance having been sustained by overmuch government spending during 2008/9. Diversification across multiple asset classes will surely - if selectively - protect portfolios during 2010.

A final message from the banking and financial crisis: we are now in an investment climate within which literally anything can happen. As investors that would seem to put a premium on being highly imaginative, and with few or no preconceptions about either time-honoured economic principles, or the extremes between which investor psychology can swing.”
Quite!