Shel Silverstein’s poem Falling Up charmingly captures the slightly absurd state of world markets: a child trips on a shoelace but falls up, not down – rather like security and commodity prices have done.

Last week the FTSE 100 index closed above the 5,000 level for the first time since it plunged after Lehman Brothers’ collapse a year ago (admittedly a more substantial trip-up than a shoelace). The S&P 500 ended a year of submersion in the three digits by treading water at the 1,000-mark for the past month. Gold again broke through $1,000. What started as a fall into the unknown has turned out more like a bungee jump.