2007: a difficult year

My first year of relative underperformance since 1998, down 8.7% compared to the FTSEAllShare's positive 5.5%. Partly explained by the bad time smaller companies have had on the UK market - the FTSESmallCos being down 9.9% - but much due to a too early rush into financials, including the doomed Northern Rock .... presumably their ex-directors who made heavy mid-summer purchases of shares in the summer must look upon 2007 as a year to forget.

I was also too optimistic about the direction of the market which not only ended the year rather flat, but promptly began to plunge steeply in the first weeks of 2008.