William McChesney Martin, the longest-serving chairman of the Federal Reserve, said it was the Fed’s job “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going”. After a strange six months in which nobody has worried about the Fed’s target lending rates, the punch bowl is back at the centre of market concerns. This is, at the very least, a clear sign that life on the markets is returning to normal.

Last week’s US jobs report provoked the renewed concern about the punch bowl. Non-farm payrolls declined by 345,000; markets had expected more than 500,000 to lose their jobs.