What is it about the curse of seven? That is a question that many financiers might wonder right now. After all, two decades ago, the markets were reeling from the terrible equity crash of 1987.

Now they are bruised from a new shock – the credit crunch of 2007. And, as Jack Malvey of Lehman Brothers recently noted, this is far from the only time when the “curse of seven” has struck: 1907 and 1997, to name but two years, were also blighted by market shocks.