Guy Stephens: Playing chicken with this market could cost you dear

Market movements are usually influenced by four main factors - company fundamentals, macro and micro-economics, politics and investor psychology. At any one time, the first three of these can be more dominant or more recessive depending on developments and their magnitude. This then defines the ‘mood' of the markets, which is where investor psychology comes in. At the moment, as we are all very much aware, politics is the primary influence. It has been for much of last year and is almost certainly going to remain so for most of this year. This political noise initially generates uneas...