This is obviously not the first time the world – or financial markets – has been brought low by a collective sense of gloom.
One forerunner came at the end of the 18th century. Many of the intellectuals of the time saw only horror ahead, with Britain’s piratical rise to empire centre stage.
If only some of these late Georgian doomers could have lived a little longer, they would have seen their predictions proved spectacularly, albeit unevenly, wrong.
The point of maximum gloom was also the point at which the UK and world economy was finally locating the complicated trick of sustained economic growth after thousands of years of false starts.
The widespread horror of the time, from the reign of terror in France to the worst excesses of colonialism, may simply have contained very little information about what lay ahead.
Or perhaps this difficult moment for the world was actually part of the messy process of locating the right institutions and governance framework to allow innovation and invention to thrive.
There can be little doubt that we remain in our own very difficult moment.
This year is set to be a bumper year for elections, taking place against a tricky macroeconomic backdrop and significant geopolitical tensions.
However, in amongst the understandable gloom, there is still cause for optimism. Both in the historical narrative and in some of the incoming news.
The benefit of hindsight shows that the well-founded pessimism amongst the big public brains of the late 18th century was heroically misplaced.
New technologies arrived on the scene and met, in the UK’s jostling entrepreneurial society, a perfect seedbed. Take-off followed, to the benefit of most.
The outlook for productivity growth – the engine for everything from living standard improvements to investment returns – today is better than it’s been for some time.
Generative artificial intelligence is part of that, but so are advances in other parts of the technological frontier, from biotech to batteries.
In this context, valuations across the multi-asset sphere, from stocks to bonds to commodities, look far from intimidating.
The US election will be hard to ignore given both the choice likely facing the electorate, and the country’s standing as the world’s most influential economy.
US capital markets provide the drum beat for the world’s investments.
The power of Potus is considerable. However, thanks to a constitution designed in amongst the late 18th century strife mentioned above, it is far from unlimited.
There are restraints on executive power, particularly domestically. There are admittedly fewer constraints on international action, however, even here we should be wary of translating campaign trail promises directly into implemented policy.
Studies of the performance of the US economy and her capital markets under various political regimes would seem supportive.
