Will Donald Trump as president be good or bad for stock markets? Should investors run for the hills in fear of 1930s-style protectionist policies that may damage global trade? Or should they hang around to enjoy the possible fruits of promised tax cuts and massive infrastructure spending in the US?

The debate rages fiercely and daily. Each twitch in the stock market is taken as support for one side of the argument or the other. The Dow Jones industrial average in the US has passed 20,000 for the first time because it is anticipating goodies in store; alternatively, it hasn’t moved terribly far since mid December. Both statements are accurate.

Meanwhile, it is almost obligatory for economists and pundits to be confident about what lies ahead for investors. If there is a rough consensus, it’s that a big fiscal stimulus in the US would eventually encounter the stiff breezes of a strong dollar and higher interest rates, and there is a risk of a bust one day if Trumpist protectionism becomes truly heavy. That extremely loose working theory seems as good as any.

But here’s a sharper take on the great guessing game from Terry Smith, whose £9bn Fundsmith equity fund has performed strongly since its launch in 2010 (disclosure: I am an investor). This is Smith’s shortlist of macro factors that could affect companies and markets in the near future: Brexit, China, “demonetisation” in India, the French presidential election, the German election, interest rates, Korea, Trump, quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, Syria and the oil price.

Smith’s point is that even if you could read developments vaguely well and get your timing right, there is a second-order problem. “To usefully employ your predictions, you would not only have to make mostly correct predictions, but you would also need to gauge what the markets expected to occur in order to predict how they would react. Good luck with that,” he says.

Well, quite. One way or another, Trump’s policies – not just the economic ones – will have a profound effect on financial markets. So will some or all of Smith’s other factors. It could hardly be otherwise. But there should be no shame in saying the investment implications are currently as clear as mud.

Honours for business people should be going, going, gong

Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline and former chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, offered an excellent argument the other day for why highly paid business folk should not get knighthoods.

Senior businessmen and women tend to be showered with so much money that it would be better to reserve the honours system for those who don’t get to collect big bucks. “I think to get both financial rewards and other recognition is just a bit too easy,” said Hampton (who, it should be pointed out, got his gong for public service).

Well said. Hampton could have added a second argument. Business careers can only be judged properly when they are over, and often some time after that. This is the Fred Goodwin problem. The former chief executive of RBS (before Hampton’s time) was a hero until the bank sank. Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood. James Crosby, former chief executive of HBOS, the other great British banking disaster, gave his award back before he could suffer a similar fate.

Sir Philip Green still has a gong (for now), but even if the Topshop owner eventually coughs up a few hundred million quid for the BHS pension fund, it’s hard to imagine it would be awarded today. Labour is also calling for Sir John Rose, the former chief executive of Rolls-Royce, to lose his knighthood after the engine manufacturing company admitted to bribery and corruption during his period at the top.

Handing out mid-career gongs is like awarding medals for a marathon while the race is still in progress. Most directors’ contracts at FTSE 100 companies these days acknowledge the point as it applies to bonuses, by including clawback clauses. A knighthood that could be routinely clawed back would be a nonsense – the Goodwin case caused a huge kerfuffle, remember. Better just to drop the gongs for corporate business leaders.

Investors lose appetite for Restaurant Group

Shares in Restaurant Group were overcooked at 700p a year ago. Now they’re 300p, and the 13% decline on Wednesday indicates investors’ loss of appetite. You can’t blame them. The chief executive, Andy McCue, recruited to revitalise a group that includes Garfunkel’s and Frankie & Benny’s, is impressed by “my colleagues’ passion”, but little else, it seems. The only things wrong are the prices, the menus and the service. In the restaurant game, that’s all you’re offering. “Significant change” is required. You bet.