The past year has been challenging for equities. Markets started the year on a positive footing as the US economic recovery continued to strengthen and it appeared likely that China’s central bank would be able to engineer a soft landing for its economy. But a surprise devaluation of the renminbi, followed by a broad selloff in China equities, quickly changed things. The third quarter of the year was marked by falling asset prices and a souring of investor sentiment as concerns about China, weakness in other emerging markets and uncertainty over when the US Federal Reserve would raise rates began to bite. Economic projections got progressively weaker over the course of the year. In late 2014, the US economy was projected to grow 3% in 2015. It is now expected to grow just 2.4%. Projections for this year were slashed from 2.9% to 2.5%. In Singapore, too, the ......