For a generation now, investors, regulators and consumers have been dealing with a monumental ‘unwind’ process, that sought to and succeeded in shaking the bane of inflation and high interest rates out of the global economic system. In more recent years these concerted and aggressive acts of governments and central banks have consequently pushed this fix-up barrow too far… So now we head into the another great unwind, the ‘normalisation’ phase where interest rates start to rise and inflation returns. But there’s a problem...

A pickup in business and investor confidence, and a hope that inflation and global economic activity might be recovering, drove pleasing performance from investment markets recently in many parts of the world, most particularly in real estate and shares.