What goes down...

By Adam Shaw Working Lunch's Shares Expert

Last year will be remembered as a disaster for most investors.

The FTSE 100 index of leading shares lost about a quarter of its value.

That's not just bad news for people with money in equities.

It also means your private pension is worth less and endowment mortgages have lost money making it harder to pay off the mortgage.

It was the worst year for UK equities since 1974, when there was a 55% fall.

Mattress

And it was the third year in succession that the market had fallen.

The sad fact is that you've have done better shoving your cash under the mattress.

But things can only get better - can't they?

We've asked for some New Year predictions from the City on what the FTSE 100 will do in 2003.

They've given us what they think the end -of-year figure will be. We've worked that out as a percentage based on today's FTSE.

Brokers Redmayne Bentley - UP 5%

HSBC - UP 5%

Barclays Private Clients - UP 10%

Credit Suisse First Boston - UP 17%

Seven Investment Management - UP 15 -19%

NatWest - UP 20%

Of course predicting where the market average will be is one thing.

What most investors want to know is which particular shares will do best.

Hilary Cook from Barclays Private Clients says the food producing sector is one to watch.

Hillary Cook: Watch the food producers

"In the UK we've got two very strong companies, Cadbury and Unilever, and we're looking for more than 10% growth from them," she says.

"For Unilever we have a share price target of 680p. They're currently trading below 600p, so there's a lot of upside, more than 10%, and a near 3% dividend yield.

"Both these companies are very strongly cash generative and very strong business propositions."

Hillary's company is predicting 10% overall market growth, even though she admits her crystal ball gazing 12 months ago was woeful.

"Three years in a row for the stock market hadn't been seen since the 1960s, but four years down hasn't been seen since the start of World War Two," she explains.

"So there's good reason to believe that at these levels there's very good value and the stock market should rise from here."