What lessons can be drawn from the start of the year?

The year undeniably got off to a shaky start. Concerns about Chinese growth, bargain-basement commodity prices, and the Brexit outcome, just to mention a few, triggered steep volatility on all financial markets. This has been a challenging year, to say the least, in terms of visibility. While we had reasonably expected a further normalisation in US monetary policy, what actually happened was a clear status quo from the Fed, which sent interest rates to new all-time lows, particularly in Europe, where 10-year German sovereign paper is now trading at negative yields! And while international equity markets have achieved a slightly positive return in euros, they slumped several times before rallying, and investor confidence is still weak...