Advancement through technology, vorsprung durch technik, runs the marketing slogan of Volkswagen’s subsidiary Audi. Rather than advance, though, Porsche’s VW takeover has made a nonsense of German capital markets. On Monday a short squeeze pushed up VW’s share price by nearly 150 per cent – enough to boost the DAX index by 1 per cent even though all other stocks fell. Conversely, VW’s fall on Wednesday pushed down the DAX while all other stocks rose.

This whirligig has hurt hedge funds shorting VW. But it has also hurt long-only fund managers that avoided VW. By not owning VW, their performance relative to indices has suffered by as much as 3 percentage points – and with that their fees.