As investors, most of our strategies for protecting our capital and profiting from future trends are based on how markets behaved in the past. But increasingly that doesn’t seem to work.

Strange things have been happening over the past four years.

Growth in corporate earnings has almost disappeared in America, yet share prices are in a firm up-trend.

Bonds are so highly valued that they trade on yields so low they seem ridiculous.

A tidal wave of money inflates the values of almost all major tradeable assets (not quite all… gold has been ignored).

Historically, the dollar has tended to weaken when Wall Street is on the rise, and vice versa. But recently the two have moved up in tandem.

And historically, commodities have closely tracked equities. But commodities are no longer doing that. They’ve been declining while Wall Street has been rising.

Globally, economic growth has recovered from the credit crisis, but remains relatively weak. Consumers and businessmen lack confidence in the future, while governments increasingly resort to extreme and risky strategies to engineer a return to the glory days. The outlook is not encouraging.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for optimism…

David Fuller's view

Here is On Target.

There are a number of good points in this issue, which should not be overlooked at a time of seasonal underperformance and today’s heavy selling in response to the chaos involving Greece and the EU.