An unabashed stock market bull, an investment bargain hunter and an Irishman... not the beginning of a joke, but the line-up at the Anchor Investment Management 2nd Annual Investment Forum.

Anchor Investment manage one of the Island's largest pension funds, the BF&M golden accumulator.

Yesterday, pension holders had the chance to hear presentations by some of the funds in which their "nest eggs" are invested. It's a worrying time for some investors: do they need to carry on working for a few more years in order to counteract the effects of the poor investment climate?

One retired pension holder said that he was concerned about his investment returns: "It's a fine line, you don't know how many years you will live after you retire, and how much money you will need to spend on .Tommy Sterns, general manager of John Barritt & Sons said he appreciated the opportunity to get more information: "It concerns me that my staff have security."

The company pension has been handled by BF&M since the 1960s and Mr. Sterns said he was satisfied that the pensions were safe.

He thinks that the current investment climate will not cause people to have to put off their retirement.

"But it will certainly impact their retirement."

One of the main speakers, Timothy Phelan of the Bank of Ireland Asset Management Ltd, summed up why the past two years have been so bad:

"We had a short, shallow recession, not an economic crisis, but the markets fell out of bed completely...."

He said that after the terrible events of September 11, the series of corporate scandals meant that "investors went from concerns about earnings to concerns about whether they could believe the earnings they were told about."

Mr. Phelan said that the market was now in recovery, but it's a U-shaped recovery, not a V-shaped recovery and it will take a bit longer than some might hope. The natural sell off of stocks from unjustifiable heights, however, means that the markets are now at attractive levels.

Steven Kowal, an associate director of Fidelity Investments in London made the provocative comment that he hopes the markets will stay flat for a few years. That way, he explained, he will be able to scoop up equities at a good price in a flat market. He is confident that they will "get there eventually."

He is in the fortunate position of not needing his money in the near future and can take advantage of the long term opportunities. Mr. Kowal advised "There are two things you need to be a successful investor: patience and discipline."

Small comfort to elderly members of the audience who cannot afford to wait for their embattled stocks to rise again.

For younger investors, however, Mr. Kowal had a useful warning: "An investment advisor's job is not to find you the next best thing." People who think that their investment advisors have a crystal ball which reveals which class of fund will be profitable next year, are bound to be disappointed.

According to Mr. Kowal, an "unabashed stock market bull", the only sure fire way to success is to invest in equities, and to invest long term, the longer the better.

Volatility in the equity market is necessary, he said: "This flushing out of bad companies- it's called capitalism, it's a beautiful thing!"

Avoiding the volatility of the equity market in favour of bonds and cash is no solution. On the contrary, not having money invested in the stock market exposes a saver to the risk that with rising inflation, the costs of goods will rise more quickly than your investments.

In terms of your future standard of living, the important thing is to protect your purchasing power.

For those who currently feel that they wouldn't dare put their money in the stock market, Mr. Kowal said that past generations had also faced stages when investment must have seemed daunting: "Think back to 1973. Nixon was impeached, there were dead soldiers coming back from Vietnam... "

Other examples such as the Cuban missile crisis also put the current geopolitical uncertainties into perspective.

His message: in the big scheme of things, current problems are just a blip. The equity market will deliver in the long term.