Laith Khalaf

As a business RBS remains a work in progress, and consequently an investment for recovery investors with a long term investment horizon.

Few argue the RBS bailout was necessary to maintain financial stability, but the cost of that intervention is now starting to emerge.

If you went back to the financial crisis very few people would have predicted that it would have taken so long to heal the wounds. Whilst RBS is relatively well capitalised, the issue is profitability rather than solvency.

Over half of the property fund sector is now on ice, and will remain so until managers raise enough cash to meet redemptions. To do that they need to sell properties, and as any homeowner knows, that is not a quick or painless procedure, these funds are therefore likely to be closed for weeks and months rather than simply a matter of days.

Tesco has maintained the positive momentum it picked up around the beginning of this year... against a challenging retail backdrop.

Tesco has maintained the positive momentum it picked up around the beginning of this year, with sales continuing to rise against a challenging retail backdrop, the elephant in the room is Amazon, which is currently testing out a grocery delivery service for some customers in London; if successful this represents a clear and present danger to the health of UK supermarkets.

This is the total opposite of 2013 when active UK funds posted large outperformance of the FTSE All Share, performance over both years can be largely explained by active manager's propensity to hold more mid-caps than the market weighting. This served them well in 2013 but has proved a drag in 2014 when it is the blue chips that have outperformed.