Any other business: Are stock markets ‘cheered’ because traders are trying to save their own jobs?

I’m picturing you reading this in your armchair beside a blazing log fire on Friday evening, Christmas tree lights twinkling over your shoulder, spaniels steaming at your feet, beaker of mulled wine in your hand. ‘Quite exciting while it lasted,’

I hear you say, ‘but thank God it’s all over. Here’s to Angela and Nicolas and the FTSE through 6,000 by New Year’s Eve. Might even have another pop at those Italian government bonds on Monday. Pass the ski chalet brochures.’

Or perhaps you’re shivering in your overcoat with a mug of instant soup, contemplating the latest dismal news from British manufacturers as well as the implications of Standard and Poor’s threat to downgrade all eurozone debt, including that of France and Germany, and the cloudy outcome of the EU summit at the end of the week after the apparently decisive clarity of the Merkel-Sarkozy meeting on Monday. The mood swings in this continuing crisis are extreme, we are nowhere near the beginning of the end, and what is bizarre is how easily share prices in London and Europe are ‘cheered’, as headline writers like to put it, at every stumbling step.