There is an old stock market adage that what happens to shares in January can determine the direction of the market for the rest of the year. The so-called January barometer says: “As January goes, so goes the full year.” It is reckoned to be accurate about 75 per cent of the time, which is quite a high success rate. But how is that possible? How can something that happens in the first 31 days of a calendar year have such a profound effect for the remaining 334 days? Firstly, stock markets tend to rise, anyway. It is an underlying feature of capitalism, which is simply nothing more than putting capital to work to generate a decent return on the money. Just think about how we, as individuals, shop around for deposit accounts that pay a better rate of interest. Or how we might withdraw money from a savings account to buy Treasuries because the latter offers a better return. Companies do something similar....