The UK and Europe are heading towards recession, Chris Rice, European Fund Manager, Sanditon Asset Management, warned the Morningstar Investment Conference in London today.

Mr Rice, speaking about the ending of QE, he said the stability that QE brought was ending and being replaced by slowdown and potentially recession.

He told hundreds of delegates: "It feels like, smells like every single slowdown I've ever known. We will likely move into recession."

He joked that QE had been "good for old people" - it had helped preserve wealth for older people by maintaining stability and pumping money into bonds, underpinning their savings.

As a result, he said, the 'Bank of Mum & Dad' was now the 10th biggest lender in the UK with wealthier parents helping their impoverished offspring to get on the increasingly unaffordable housing ladder.

In terms of world economic trends, it seems as if the Americans had taken a step back from rapidly increasing bank rates in the near future for fear of damaging wobbly markets, he said.

"The drops in in equity markets have scared central bankers," he said.

However, with the ending of QE more normal cycles were returning and that included indications that the long bull run market was over and a more pessimistic bear market was emerging which advisers and investors would have to get used to and react to.

He said he was already looking towards defensive stocks such as pharma and consumer defensives less prone to recession. Markets would be depressed for a time.

Cash was the obvious defensive position, he said, but many had tried to find every alternative apart from cash. The classical bear market sectors would re-emerge, he believed.

Mr Rice said that indications were that the slowdown had started over a year ago and economic indicators suggests that economies were slowing down around the world although a dramatic decline was not on the cards.