MY cash investment curse has struck yet again leaving me potentially out of pocket for the umpteenth time.

I told readers last year how things went wrong every time I made an investment. No safe bank account or building society could be trusted once my money went near it.

Well, if you didn't believe me, it's happened once more, this time with the degeneration of Equitable Life.

The investment firm made the news after shutting its sales department and closing its doors to new business, following a legal ruling that it must pay £1.5 billion to meet policy guarantees.

Sadly, this means there are likely to be significantly lower returns for people without such guarantees. And naturally, I'm one of those likely to suffer. I took out an additional voluntary contribution (AVC) pension with Equitable less than two years ago.

I chose them, after my many bitter experiences, because they were the oldest mutual society in the world. I think they've been around for more than 240 years.

Even I wasn't arrogant enough to think the Curse of Cohen would be powerful enough to damage such a renowned institution. But yes it is. It's taken me just 18 months to bring Equitable to its knees (although it is thankfully still solvent).

Local MP David Lidington has demanded an independent Commons inquiry into the crisis to discover just what went wrong and why. Sorry David, there's no need for this because I can tell you why it's me and my reverse Midas Touch.

The same thing happened when I took out unit trusts during my youth. All my friends had boasted of huge returns over a long period from these trusts, but as soon as I joined, we had the Black Monday stock market crash.

Then I was advised to invest in endowments because they had 'never failed'. As we all now know, the endowment industry is in chaos with many policy-holders being told they won't have enough cash to pay off their mortgages.

However, whenever I pull out of share schemes, I invariably watch in shock as they do incredibly well.

Staff now follow my every move whenever an opportunity comes up. If I invest, they don't and vice versa.

Maybe I should seek a job in the City, because I'm sure there's a market for this sort of talent.