When I last wrote a Notes & Trends, we were all looking at economic reports and what the professional economists and soothsayers were seeing in the year to come. This month, we’re seeing more granular predictions as organisations release their various investor intention surveys.

These samples of investor sentiment are a lot like holding your finger to the wind. You can say which way the wind is blowing in the spot where you are standing and at the time you are sampling it, but with a different sample in a different place and at a different time, the wind might be blowing in a totally different direction. Same with any survey. If the survey is overweighted to German respondents, Germany is going to look like the overwhelming favourite investment region. Increase the Nordic respondents and the Nordic region suddenly seems more popular. So with the caveat that any survey is only as good as its sample, and remembering that responding to questions asking where investors expe