A changed world
Ten years ago, when we were still scarred by the recent dot.com bust and buoyed by the seemingly unstoppable credit-fuelled house price boom, who would have predicted that Apple would outperform RBS by a factor of 160 over the next decade? In the same way, it might seem perverse today to expect banks to outpace technology over the next 10 years.
But in the week that the US Federal Reserve gave a green light to $100bn of dividends and buybacks from newly secure US banks and in which investors have bailed out of the highly rated technology stocks that have led the market higher all year, it is worth reflecting on how important but difficult it was to spot the straws in the wind in the summer of 2007. At least this time round you can watch it all unfold on your iPhone.