After the stock market surge of 2013, last year turned out to be trickier to navigate for many investors. Our review of the year showed up pretty slim pickings for a number of guru-inspired investing strategies - although there were still some strong performers. Reflecting on market conditions through 2014, Stockopedia's Paul Scott offered his small-cap perspective here - it's safe to say that perilous Chinese will remain at bargepole distance in 2015.

But while UK investors faced some tough conditions, it seems it was equally tough for hedge funds, particularly in the US. This article by CIO suggests the smooth ride by the S&P last year caused many hedge funds to have a terrible time.

New Year's Resolutions

At the turn of 2014 nobody was predicting an oil price shock of the scale that we've since seen. US finance professor Aswath Damodaran takes a detailed look at what happened and what it all means for investors. Elsewhere, US investor Meb Faber offered up his outlook for 2015, while the inimitable Richard Beddard at Interactive Investor set out some of his New Years Resolutions - AGM resolutions, that is.

At Stockopedia, we offered up our own spin on some New Year 'Naps' - a cross section of shares currently ranking among the highest anywhere for their Quality, Value & Momentum metrics. We'll be watching closely to see how they get on this year. It should be noted that over the last couple of years, the very best rank has been the “QM Rank" which ignores valuation but hones in on high quality momentum stocks. We are comfortable with our prudent more value oriented stance given the macro risks.

On QVM investing...

Anyone with a passing interest in modern finance may well have come across the work of Eugene Fama and Ken French. These two finance professors are behind some highly influential, and sometimes divisive, market theories. Back in the early 1990s, they pinpointed the size effect and the value effect as key drivers of returns, in addition to regular market risk. In a recent paper they expanded that three-factor model to five factors, by adding 'quality' features like profitability and investment efficiency. Staggeringly, they found that value actually stopped working. Here's a great riposte to all that from Cliff Asness at AQR Capital. He takes on…

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