All this week, Morningstar.co.uk will be bringing you a Guide to Investment Ideas for 2017; stock picks, market reactions and political forecasts from the investment professionals.
Emma Wall: 2017 holds the potential for great political upset. There are general elections in Europe, in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Fund managers are warning that these could cause significant market volatility. But as we saw in 2016, market volatility can provide excellent investment opportunities.
The difficulty is, market timing. If you had invested in the depths of the Brexit vote when the market crashed, you would have seen significant returns to the end of the year. But as the professionals would tell you, market timing is near impossible to get right.
One way that retail investors can get around this is through a regular savings plan. You can invest from as little as £50 a month through an investment platform. And if you set up a regular savings plan within an ISA or a SIPP, these investments can be tax-efficient too.