More than a year into the Big Freeze and a look at the US equity and fixed income markets reveals that investors remain caught between hope and fear.

Thanks to a big slide in oil prices, the S&P 500 was at one point up 4.5 per cent in the past week. Optimists said signs of a market bottom in equities were emerging and that beaten-up stock prices offered value for bargain hunters. Yet such talk ignored evidence that credit conditions keep tightening and that the vaunted US consumer and corporate profits face tough conditions for some time, and on Tuesday such concerns pushed stocks lower.