I am belatedly reading a book at the moment called The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck (the asterisk is the choice of the book publisher). I’m only about halfway through, but the gist is that there’s value in embracing adversity, picking your battles and just not expecting the world to make you happy. Find fulfilment in the things you can control and that are important to you. Care less.
I mention this not because I’ve turned my hand to self-help columns, or because I take a weird pride in reading popular non-fiction books a decade after they are released, but because it really feels like financial markets have internalised this message.
The past seven weeks have been a huge stress test of investors’ nerves. Energy price inflation has jumped by the biggest margin in a quarter of a century, according to the number-crunchers at UBS, and there’s every chance it could get much worse. In many parts of the world, it already has. The IMF says the global economy will slow to a Covid pace if we carry on like this. Nato is in peril. Geopolitics are a mess. Governments pretty much everywhere have to find the money for defence, and quickly.