Party over?

A short note on the risks of spending too much time entertained by brightly coloured figures moving about on one's hand-held device whilst riding a bicycle.

The market's five-week long fixation on headlines emanating from Brussels, Frankfurt, Madrid, Rome or Washington came to an end on Wednesday with the sudden realization that it had managed, in its rapture, to blindly pedal from the credit crisis fairground on to the economy autobahn. The result is obvious on the left.

The industry-stacked Dax underperformed the bank-heavy Ibex 35 by about 3.2 percent over the course of the mayhem.

Of course, this may all be an irrelevant sideshow, what with a certain palpable sense of panic in the air with respect to Monday morning.

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