Santa rally or Christmas crash, health insurance smallprint and NS&I's 'holy grail' - here's our weekly heads-up on the financial stories that may have caught your clients' attention over the weekend …
Ian Cowie: Send me long-term returns, Santa, I've been a good investor this year In his Sunday Times column, Ian Cowie wonders whether investors could be facing a ‘Santa rally' or a ‘Christmas crash' this month. Since the FTSE 100 index was established in 1984, he notes, it has risen in 27 out of 33 Decembers - at an average increase of 2.5%, compared with an overall average monthly rise of 0.7% across the last 33 years. Cowie puts forward "window dressing" as one explanation behind any December jump in the market - fund managers buying the year's top-performing stocks to improve the l...
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