Low growth may be the ‘new normal’ for world markets

Last year proved to be a difficult one for global investors. 

It was dominated by the Federal Reserve, China, commodity price deflation, and related emerging market pain.

Geopolitical events abounded — a massive migration of people out of troubled parts of the Middle East and Africa heading to Europe, a number of key elections (the most recent being Argentina, Spain, and Venezuela), a very profound political crisis in Syria which now involves Iran, Russia, Europe, Turkey, and the United States, an uptick in radical Islamic terrorist attacks (Paris), and an unravelling of the old political order in Brazil.