While it is very important to understand what is going on in the financial markets I think for the majority of individual investors too much information can be a bad thing. Depending on your specific investment goals you need to make a decision on how much information you need to know and how you are going to let this affect your decision making. Take for example a day trader vs a pension portfolio, a day trader will be in and out of positions daily where as a pension investor may review his/ her portfolio on a yearly basis. Pension portfolios should be constructed in such a way that they are delivering returns over a longer time frame and as such daily portfolio restructuring shouldn’t happen. And if it is you will be paying for it!

So with all that said, we can all agree everyone from day traders to institutional investors 2014 has been a great year for equity markets and we can thank the worlds big central banks. Forget all of the fancy financial jargon that we bombarded with on a daily basis, all of the complicated terminology that confuses people here is what’s going on right now in a few short bullet points.

• Global equity markets up around all time highs again.
• The poor Euro currency is coming under pressure as ECB head towards QE
• The US is performing well as corporate earnings feel the benefits of QE.
• The UK is on the road to rate increases but wouldn’t be expecting to see them coming too soon.
• Japan has continued with its QE bazooka, as the weak Yen is going to help the county on its recovery path.
• The strong USD along with oversupply and reduced demand from China have left oil prices really badly hurt.

All in all we can’t really complain things are starting to pick up however the recovery paths are not as symmetrical as central banks would have wished for, the UK and the US are nearing the so called end of the QE cycle (I’ll believe this when I see it) while the EU have yet to commence and the BOJ are smack bang in the middle of it.