The Athelney Trust unaudited total return for 2016 was 5.5% and reflected the below-average performance by commercial property shares in the second half of the year. Imagine a time-traveller landing in the City in January 2016, proclaiming that the UK would vote to leave the EU, a presidential candidate who advocated debt renegotiation would be headed for the White House and that Italy would reject the reforms of Matteo Renzi. Surely, the men in white coats would have arrived, bundled him into a van and then disappeared. But the first shock of 2016 was the big sell-off in Chinese stock-markets when a clumsy attempt to calm markets in January back-fired, sparking worldwide turmoil. The price of oil dropped to its lowest in 13 years.

All this meant that investors slowly worked out that there would have to be more helpful intervention rather than less. And so it came about that Japan announced a surprise experiment with interest rates below zero, the Bank of England cut interest rates after the referendum and the European Central Bank turned to new measures such as buying corporate debt for the first time. Because of the collapse in the British pound, depressed sectors in London markets such as miners and oils suddenly perked up and finished on a strong note as the Chinese economy started to react positively to yet more economic stimulus having been applied by the government. A big part of these strong markets are economies where growth and employment statistics are improving. In the whole of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, only Belarus and Syria are expected to stay in recession. Europe was not a popular place to invest in 2016 with Germany, France and the Netherlands all facing difficult elections in 2017.

There is plenty of scope for new shocks and surprises this year, particularly at election time with populism, anti-immigration and anti-EU to the fore. Markets are likely to react with considerable volatility but we must not be deflected from our task of identifying good companies, with the old-fashioned virtues, which are more than capable of surviving a weaker UK economy as the year progresses.