Since the top of global equity markets on Halloween 2007, the way to outperform in developed market equities has been to make currency bets. In local currency terms, Japan, western Europe and the US have been remarkably uniform.

In dollar terms, Japan has nicely outperformed. The Nikkei 225 is down 31 per cent since the top – far better than the S&P 500 (down 39.9 per cent) or the FTSE Eurofirst 300 (down 45.8 per cent).