Head of multi-asset investments David Coombs’s Nan Connie was so sceptical of debt it made her wax lyrical. Her old advice prompts him to wonder if a tempest is building in debt markets or if it’s all just Shakespearean melodrama.

It’s been one miserable tiding after another for the UK this year. Yet Rathbone UK Opportunities Fund manager Alexandra Jackson notes the FTSE All-Share has shrugged off the malaise to post one of its best starts to the year in three decades.