Investors should be cautiously positioned as the global economy and markets face major uncertainties. The downgrade will be a further headwind to growth and job creation in the U.S.

Investors should invest on what they know. The biggest mistake is to invest on what they don't know.

We normally think if you're going to lend someone money, you should get some reward for doing this. In Europe, it's a tax!

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

It is hard to imagine that, having downgraded the US, S & P will not follow suit on at least one of the other members of the dwindling club of sovereign AAAs. If this were to materialise and involve a country like France, for example, it could complicate the already fragile efforts by Europe to rescue countries in its periphery.

The once-unthinkable loss of the AAA rating will constitute a further hit to already fragile business and consumer confidence.

Once you start moving [market] lower, then you trigger of all sorts of things. You trigger people who have to sell because they're over-levered. So they sell their winners and their losers. They're just trying to raise cash. So, what you then get is spreading malaise throughout the global markets.