By Gerald Davies, of Kymin Financial Services

Ten years ago, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The American giant organisation fell like a pack of cards, bringing down with it 450 other banks in the United States and countless undertakings around the world.

In Britain, RBS and HBOS had to be rescued. The reasons were many and complex.

The most pertinent question was asked by the Queen: "Why was it that nobody saw this coming?”

Ten years ago, on September 18, 2008, I wrote to all Kymin’s clients about how to solve the problem of the lack of liquidity.

I quote from that letter: "In the final analysis, governments can print money.”

And guess what, they did!

In March 2009, the Bank of England started the process called Quantitative Easing, in other words, printing money. They went on doing it and eventually the European Central Bank did the same.

So, how have investments performed in the last ten years?

The low point of the Stock Market was March 2009, when the FTSE100 (Financial Times index of the top 100 companies) was around 3,500.

It is now more than twice that figure.

To this must be added the Company Dividend income which, across the whole London Stock Market, is averaging 3.8 per cent a year. A bit better than your interest on deposits or building society accounts.

Looking to the future, there are opportunities for investment ahead.

The present climate of opinion is affected by uncertainty, which all markets hate.

Once we have an answer to the questions 'Are we getting Brexit?' and 'What sort of Brexit will it be?' things will become clearer.

Immediately after the Brexit referendum, in early July 2016, in another letter to clients I wrote a little quiz: “In January this year (2016) would you have expected any of the following: Britain would vote to leave the EU?, England would be defeated by the Iceland football team?, Leicester City would win the Premiership?. On that last one, you could have got odds against of 5,000 to one (sadly I didn’t).

The lesson to be learned, ten years on from Lehman Brothers is, diversify.

One of the main messages we give to our clients is 'Don’t put all your eggs in one basket'. Our other guiding principal is 'think long term'.