From the Editor

By all accounts, this has been an eventful year. It hasn’t been bad enough for hacks to call it annus horribilis, but, to quote Queen Elizabeth, “It is not a year on which (we) shall look back with undiluted pleasure”. In plain English, it has been a mixed bag. Globally, the economies started off on a gloomy note, thanks to the events of the previous year, and went rapidly downhill. But the various stimulus packages from governments around the world helped stem the tide, or so it seems. At the end of the year, are we better off than we were at the beginning? More importantly, have the events of the past year taught us anything?

At MONEY TODAY, we subscribe to the school of thought that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Honestly, we don’t want a repeat of 2009, do we? So, at the end of the year, it seems right to look back at the events of the past 12 tumultuous months and see what we, as investors, have learned. Some learnings might seem counter-intuitive, others obvious. Allocate assets carefully, don’t time the market, buy low, sell high—across sectors lessons have definitely been hammered in.

Another takeaway has been that there are always two sides to a story. Nowhere has it been illustrated better than in the recommendations of the Swarup Committee on Investor Awareness and Protection, the most controversial of which is the proposal to do away with agents’ commissions. D. Swarup, the author of the recommendations, says this is in the best interest of customers. The agents, however, beg to differ. We decided to speak to both parties and bring you their opposing views. While there is much to be said on both sides, we hope that the end result will be a more transparent payment structure. Like the year, this issue is a mixed bag of good and not-so-good news.

We would like to wish you a happy new year, and hope that January 2010 will usher in 12 months of prosperity.