The product - or service - that professes to be all things to all men (or women) usually requires that extra bit of scrutiny. So it is with New Ireland Assurance's latest tracker bond - the fourth from its Guaranteed Tracker Bond series. The publicity material claims that this "innovative new Tracker Bond . . . meets the needs of all types of investors - from the cautious to the aggressive". It tries to do so by offering nine different investment options, from "A" to "I" which vary the level of security and potential growth of the investor's individual needs.

You will need a minimum of £5,000 to buy into this bond which has a fixed investment term of six years. There are five indices being tracked, the dominant one being the Japanese Nikkei 300 which accounts for 45 per cent of the weighting. The balance is made up of the Swiss SMI (20 per cent), the FTSE-100 (15 per cent), and a 10 per cent weighting each of the French CAC 40 and the Dutch AEX indices. As for the different options, they range from Option A which guarantees a gross payout of 80 per cent of the invested capital plus a potential 227 per cent return of any growth of the indices and is aimed at more aggressive investors, to Option I which guarantees a gross payout of 120 per cent of capital invested (i.e. all your capital plus an additional guaranteed 20 per cent return) but only 48 per cent of any actual growth of the indices.

New Ireland uses Option D, (in which 95 per cent of the capital is guaranteed but there is the potential to earn 160 per cent of any growth in the indices) to show what would happen to a £10,000 investment if the indices grew by 50 per cent over the period. In this case the guaranteed gross return is £9,500 while the cash return from the 50 per cent growth in the indices is £8,000 (160 per cent of 50 per cent multiplied by £10,000). The gross return of £17,500 is reduced to £15,550 when DIRT of 26 per cent is deducted, working out at a net annualised return of 7.6 per cent. With the exception of the Nikkei 300, and to a lesser extent the French CAC, all of these indices have performed pretty well in the past six years. (The Dutch AEX, in particular has achieved growth returns of 246 per cent.)

But the bull run of investment markets looks like it is finally coming to a close and investors in established markets like these should not necessarily expect a repeat of such performances - at least not in the relatively near future. An 18-month averaging clause for this bond also suggests that returns from this tracker will be more modest than earlier ones. This bond issue closes on December 12th and given the volatility of international stock markets at the moment, potential investors should take independent advice, not only on the merits of this tracker but on the timing of any investment. Some financial analysts believe that the "dead cat bounce" could happen yet - in investment parlance this translates as a possibility that markets could still suffer another, even more dramatic fall than the ones we've seen in the past fortnight.