Most people are under exposed to global assets, including foreign stocks, bonds and currencies.

As a whole, investors should welcome attempts to safeguard the integrity of markets. You need very clear rules applied to markets.

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

The one instrument that has relative political autonomy is monetary policy. Central banks do not need to go to Congress to get approval for an interest rate hike.

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.

Most people are under exposed to global assets, including foreign stocks, bonds and currencies.

The world changes! So we're in a situation today where the only policymakers that have flexibility are central banks. But they don't have the instruments! So they've had to experiment, and the more you experiment, the more uncertainty and the higher the risk of collateral damage.