"HatTip" - Mother to Son: "I have no idea what you do."

When your mum asks you how your clients are handling the bad news around the markets and you answer "Very well: they have been silent", I guess you are asking for trouble.

But that is why I am called Nick "Trouble Is My Middle Name" Lincoln: brave to a fault, I go where others fear to tread. And if antagonising your mother is not a sure fire route to perdition then I do not know what is.

Now I do not rile her deliberately; I am fond of my mother - she has been like a parent to me. But she

"HatTip" - "A Tax On Stupidity"

It remains one of life's oddities that the very people who must invest are typically those least inclined to do so. Many such people choose to shun investment "risk", preferring instead the illusory safety of cash.

This is probably very true at the moment: markets are apparently volatile; one can almost hear the waves of relief as nervous "investors" sell their portfolios to cash until things "settle down".

"HatTip" - Foolish Forecasts

Like more and more of us I no longer read the printed press. Yet I know what the newspaper money supplements will be full of at this time of year: useless - useless - financial forecasts for 2016.

How do I know this? Because it happens every year; it is as guaranteed as the sun rising in the east, as certain as that extra dose of misery unveiled in the Christmas Day East Enders episode.

But if these forecasts really are useless, how come they come around, again and again?