'Grape expectations' as wine industry offers safer returns

I can remember the moment a friend suggested that I buy my first portfolio of shares, just around the time the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index neared 5,000 points at the beginning of June.

"Even novice investors like you will make instant money," she insisted, fully confident in her belief that "money breeds money" and that the stock market represented the smartest way to becoming rich.

But as we have all seen so painfully in the past month, this desire - some might say addiction - to speculate has led to troubled times.