It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The big beasts of the investment world were supposed to return from the beaches, take one look at the stock market, decide it was too high, and sell. But they haven’t. If anything they have been doing the opposite. So much so, that September is struggling to live up to its reputation as the toughest month for equities.

On Wednesday, the FTSE 100 closed above 5,000 for the first time in almost a year and further gains saw the index hit a fresh high for 2009 on Friday. So far this month, the blue chip index is up 2.1 per cent. And there are good reasons for thinking the rally, which started back in March when the FTSE hit 3,512, has further to run, in the short term at least.