It might seem perverse, after a week when global stock markets slipped into panic mode, to consider the merits of a new way of calibrating the market’s performance that can realistically only prove its value over the longer term. The one thing we know about panic sell-offs, however, is that they always create opportunities for bargain-hunters with extended time horizons. Last week’s events, we can be sure, will prove to be no exception, which is one reason, no doubt, why Warren Buffett has been dipping into his cash pile to pick up shares in Swiss Re and a mixed bag of other instruments on the cheap.

A new bear market, if that is where we are heading, could prove to give a useful boost to the new fundamental index instruments now being brought to market. Until now I have been somewhat sceptical about these variants on traditional passively managed instruments. Despite the impressive academic qualifications of some of their leading exponents, such as Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel, the suspicion is that fundamental indices are little more than a classic example of data mining.