The euro remains under fierce assault and stock markets all over the world are unstable, so what potential reasons may there be for placing your money into stocks right now?

There are five arguments in favour of investing for the long term in stocks.

The FTSE 100 dropped more than 2% to under the psychologically important 5,000 level last Tuesday. But on Wednesday and Thursday, discount hunters had been purchasing up low-cost shares and pushing the FTSE back up to get back all of Tuesday’s slump.

Professional investors have also been profiting from lower prices.

Anthony Bolton, the celebrated Fidelity fund supervisor staking his status on a brand new China fund, is investing about 400m of British savers’ cash there.

Last week he stated market falls introduced ‘important opportunities.’

With savings rates at record lows, corporations that pay dividends to shareholders are attractive.

The lower their share prices, the more lucrative their hoped-for dividends become.

Numerous FTSE 100 giants, such as drug maker Glaxo and telecoms giant Vodafone, pay handsome dividends.

Buying shares in such corporations can secure a yield – that’s the worth of the historic dividend relative to share price – of 5%.

There is additionally the hope of capital growth though, importantly, values may fall further. How reliable are these companies’ dividends?

A lot of our largest corporations earn most of their profits abroad.

Many additionally produce goods and services – like healthcare or tobacco – for which there’s robust demand even during recessions.

Dividends have not often been extra necessary to investors. If you don’t wish to spend money on shares directly, you can decide an equity income fund where a professional fund manager does the work on your behalf.

The euro crisis has pushed international capital toward the dollar, pushing it up against weaker currencies, including sterling.

That is excellent news for British buyers in shares or funds where company earnings, and dividends, are denominated in US dollars as they get an uplift purely on currency.

The decoupling argument posed the speculation that emerging economies like China and India had ample momentum to develop, even if the established economies of the west faltered or shrank.

That idea proved flawed in 2009 when the global recession triggered by the West’s financial crisis brought about even China’s highly effective economy to cease growing.

But now economists say decoupling actually is happening. Whereas the West languishes in fragile recovery, China and India thrive and supply buyers opportunities to profit.

James Dowey, economist at fund group Neptune, says: ‘Till now, these markets have been suppliers of products needing to be exported. Post-crisis, they’re demonstrating they have the size to grow internally.’

Buyers have access to many funds that invest in China. Extremely regarded ones include First State Greater China Growth and Jupiter China.

Whether or not British traders opt for a China fund they’re more likely to profit from the nation’s progress by way of their holdings in British companies, similar to Burberry, which trade increasingly in Asia.

Be cautious as China’s development has always been in jumps and stops and will continue so.

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