“The first month of 2008 was affected by a high degree of volatility. The fluctuations can be attributed to the following event: following the negative macroeconomic indicators (increasing unemployment rate, higher inflation) in the US, France’s Société Générale announced a loss of E4.9bn due to speculative trading activities. The liquidation of many long futures positions on European equity indices aggravated the situation on the global stock exchanges. In this difficult market environment, we left the portfolio relatively unchanged and built up a cash position of 10 per cent.”