There is more than one chill wind out there at the moment. One is economic and the other is, well, a chill wind.
It is a bit of a shame Chubb is owned by a Swedish firm, but then again, that might also be quite appropriate.
There is nothing like the British when their backs are against the wall, with a bayonet fixed and their chins up.
For when times get hard, that is when we, too, get hard. The only way out of this mess is to invest, invest, invest.
What could be a better defensive stock than a brewer?
After all, if you cannot make money in this market, simply buy a lot of the product.
You might make a few quid on the empties. Alternatively you might just come round when the market has recovered.
What do you do for a holiday or business trip in a recession? Find the cheapest plane going, mayhap?
Could that be easyJet? But are we seriously suggesting a punt in an airline? After all, quite a few have well, come to a shuddering halt.
Those of you of a certain age will fondly remember Camberwick Green and all those lovely characters.
Well, time catches up with us all and Windy Miller is no different.
For even he, now, must begin his investing career...
You know that stuff your Missus goes out and spends large sums of money on in department stores?
Well, Croda makes the base products for all this stuff and can you imagine Mrs Investor not buying it anymore?
Jamie Oliver. Love him or hate him he is a character of fun. So is Sainsbury's.
Because everyone loves Sainsbury's and the pair of them have produced some record sales figures.
So, geezer, do we sniff a supermarket price war here, or what. Innit.
Welcome viewers to a genuine iBall exclusive. You know we like to give you some good investing ideas, especially if they are exclusive.
Here with, Richer & Booby#&39s Investment Club. with no fewer than three top ideas.
It is easy to forget, given it is an institution on our screens, that BSkyB is a relatively young business.
It is Sky News which changed the way we viewed. Or not, as the case may be...
You can take away our banks! But you will never take our fund managers! Such is the case of great Highland survivor Aberdeen Asset Management.
Or as we investors like to call it - the Flower of Scotland. Aye. Stoppit. Ahm welling up.
The scourge of 21st-century living, we refer of course to junk mail, the only use for which is starting the fire with a nice green flame.
Mind you, instead of just pushing the door open past it and then binning it, you could always invest in it...
The way you lot have been trading over the break leads us to believe you fancy the odd mining stock or two.
Given the end of the will-they-will-not-they deal with rival Rio Tinto.
Well, will they...
We are a charitable bunch and it is the bankers that need help now. Poor souls.
Bonuses gone south. Desks cleared. Empty commuter trains.
Given Alexandra has sown up number one, this is iBall's Christmas number 2.
Banana Wars. Sounds fun but no doubt it was not many laughs for the banana growers of the Caribbean and Latin America. But that is only a tiny part of the story.
And, anyway, what could be healthier and greener than investing in bananas.
Expert opinion is all very well, but if 2008 proved anything it is that it is about as valuable as a Northern Rock share certificate.
So, who better to ask about the way forward for the City of London in 2009 than the City itself?
Staying ahead of the curve and maintaining a modern, swish company and brand is a difficult game.
Get it right, you become Coca-Cola, get it wrong and a perfectly good company can turn into a good laugh...
Remember Sid? Well, he works in the chip shop round the corner from iBall's office.
Not really, he is actually a spavin-chested copywriter with a pony tail and a nasty frappuccino habit.
Summertime and the living is easy... it might be if you can sell it with ice.
On the other hand it, it looks like a share that might be good value...
So, hush.. do you wanna... sell or buy...?
The Financial Services Authority.
It regulates big firms and small, dishing out discipline to rule-breakers.
Yet, somehow, despite its conscientiousness and zeal, the $1 trillion credit crunch came along unnoticed.
All right, all right, so it is a bit wacky. Treasure hunting? Oh yes. In times like these we need to take risks.
Risks, I tell you! Do you hear. The ones where you could easily get rid of millions before you find so much as a doubloon.
You could be forgiven for thinking pawn brokers went out with rickets, scurvy and the workhouse.
But you would be wrong, and the reason for that is bad news.
But very good news for pawn brokers, as well of course lots of excuses for lame puns...
If you want a good economy, you have to build. Does that mean build, or build an economy?
Either way, someone has got to benefit from the release of more public funds and, you know, everyone has got to have somewhere to live.
The Chancellor thinks his measures will put everyone in good shape to see through the slump without entering a depression.
Many disagree, some think it might, but the people who really matter are you - the workers of the City of London.
Everyone needs a Moss Bros suit sooner or later. Whether you want to party in it or get married in it.
And with High Street mogul Sir Philip Green taking a large interest, this could be a stock for your wardrobe.
The credit crunch has penetrated the economy right down to High Streets across the land.
But what about the City itself?
Spare a thought for the poor old Press. What do they do when their readers are tired of the same old cliches?
BONUS?
Er, what bonus, I hear you ask. Well, you are not the only one. Indeed, there is more than one out there with a bonus on their minds.
These are the people, who like a pigeon, can still leave a deposit on a Porsche.
There are those of you who think booze manufacturers are classic defensive stocks.
We think Diageo is a great stock because of its discipline. That it only sells premium brands - to the people who are the most depressed, presumably.
Adrian Frost is one of the more successful managers in the income sector.
But with many bank shares not paying dividends and the general battering of financials, where are the bargains now?
Money Observer editor Andrew Pitts went to ask him...
These shares have been pounded more badly than a big rock at the end of a burly miner's pick.
Not only have they suffered in the general collapse of the commodities super-cycle but also they have also been squeezed by market forces.
It might sound unusual, looking at an insurance company in these depressed times, since you may think it might be a bit exposed to the credit markets.
Not only that but it might also be exposed to every kind of natural and man-made disaster going.
Thing about Uranium is the the price has been hammered from an all-time high, yet there is massive and increasing demand for the stuff and a finite supply.
And, call us simplistic, but given time that might well resound around your portfolio.
There's been tremendous excitement this week what with the US election and the bally old BoE slashing interest rates.
We in the iBall office, haven't got an original idea between us, haven't got a clue what to think.
But you do...
With recession on the horizon the migration of Eastern European workers to Britain has turned around and is winging its way home.
Well, coffeeheaven believes that one of those habits is the purchasing of lots of very expensive coffee.
Thing about technology is it tends to become obsolete before the rest of us learn how to code Jack Robinson. A few weeks in some cases.
We recycle everything else and have a love affair with inanimate objects like old cars, so why not old computers?
We left Sanjay and Veena desperate to invest in Bollywood but battling the Dreaded Regulator.
Can the regulator be defeated? Will Sanjay and Veena's love for investing be consummated? Can they get their money in and make a killing in films?
This can only be Bollywood, and there is only one way to approach Bollywood and that is on a epic scale.
So here, for those who did know you could buy shares in Bollywood in London, is the magnificence and spendour...
Autonomy is of interest to investors to this day because of its, er, volatility.
Paradoxically, (good word - Ed) in these times of violent volatility Autonomy seems to offer some value - and if you don't believe us, just look at the chart.
Damn, it is so hard to keep up in these weird old times. Everything is going up and down faster than a steam hammer on overdrive.
Although their shares have suffered a tad since we wrote this, Aveva still look good to us.
Numismatology is more than a mouthful which the shrewd among you will know means coin collecting.
With Avarae, the world's only investment trust based on the tradable value of coins, should be in with a good chance of er, coining it.
At times like these we need solidity, stability, home comforts, the kind of comforts than our Grandmothers used to provide.
Nice dream, but at £10,000 a pop, AGA could be the answer to your investing nightmare
The horrors of the banking crisis are still in full flow and there is doom and an unexplained yet disconcerting feeling of dread.
There is only one thing left to do when your knees are knocking and your teeth chattering with panic. Laugh.
The image of the little boy with his finger in the dyke is pretty vivid at this particular moment.
So looking for decent stock to write about here is a tough ask - even if its products were once was once described as 'crap' by its own CEO...
The giant, the monster, the biggest picture. Vodafone has been at the forefront of the investor imagination for years.
Surely we have got more to talk about right at this moment than one of the world's most traded stocks?
There has been a lot of magic in the way Bloomsbury has gone from just another publisher to THE publisher.
How does an investor in Bloomsbury hope to look for value, growth and performance in a post-Potter world? A bit of magic perhaps?
Credit crunch, then credit crisis and now market mayhem.
And why is that none of the stories we read actually explain what is really going on?
Well, we thought the best thing to do was to go and pester the people who should know - the City itself.
It is a defence contractor and it used to belong to the British Government, so a good excuse for lame James Bond jokes.
It used to belong to the British Government but they sold it to the City of London and not one share went to a private investor.
There's been a murder...
That is how Taggart star Mark McManus - the centrepiece of the eponymous show - died.
Still, like many a rock star before him, SMG has discovered that death need not be an obstacle to success...
Now and again we all need a really good detox to counteract the effects of our turbulent lives.
Porvair, tucked away in Norfolk, makes filtration systems so in theory at least, we ought to be able to use it to detox our portfolios.
