Equities and oil both experienced a pretty awful January, indeed the first two weeks were the worst start to a year that I can remember in half a century: Athelney Trust’s unaudited NAV fell by 3.8% during the month whereas the FTSE Small Cap, Fledgling and AIM All-share indices did even worse, being down by 5.8%, 4.6% and 5.5% respectively.

Huge price declines were experienced in wild volatility including intraday swings. Some say that weak global growth is the reason for all this but the lower oil price has put enormous potential spending power in the hands of consumers yet airlines’ and retailers’ shares, which would be expected to benefit from a $30 dollar barrel of oil, have fallen along with the rest. To look a little further, uncharacteristic policy mistakes by the Chinese government have hit confidence. Then again, we now have rising interest rates in America – if Janet Yellen really did go ahead with four rises this year and a similar number in 2017, then we are sunk. Luckily, I do not believe that we will get anything like that and suggest that one rise will be enough for this year.

Finally, those of us who have been buying on dips have refrained from doing so this time because of the rise in volatility but I continue to believe that it is still the correct strategy. There is value out there in small caps and, increasingly, blue chips if only one can start to think like a contrarian.