When I was a child growing up in England in the 1960s, my mother's dream for me was that I would become a bank clerk, with ambitions to be a bank manager, the epitome of all that was best in the world, safe, reliable, honest, looking after people's hard-earned savings, helping business and the world to grow. A bank manager could countersign your passport application, that's how trusted he was.

4:30 pm : Stocks may have closed with substantial losses Friday, but the extent of the downturn was far better than many initially feared.

Index futures were limit down ahead of the session's opening bell, which occurs when trading is halted in order to pace losses amid frantic selling efforts. That had participants spooked and anticipating a large scale sell-off.

ABN Amro has launched a new range of stock market indices, designed to outperform traditional benchmarks with the aid of market timing. The new indices, which will be independently calculated by Standard & Poor's, will be called the ABN Amro Alpha range.

The indices are based on the observation that investors tend to reduce risk in the approach to the end of the month or to public holidays such as Christmas. ABN Amro believes this is because traders usually have to report profits and losses at the end of these periods. They accordingly wish to "lock in" their gains.

The so-called experts reckon we're not saving enough for our retirement. This claim has the same credibility and motivation as Fred Elliott's belief that we're not eating enough meat.

If you want to know why we're not saving enough, just look at the latest numbers from performance consultants Russell Mellon Caps. They show that pension funds don't deserve to manage our money.