Global stock quakes: how world markets have shifted

Both Aberdeen’s James and Principal’s Dunbar, for example, are “cautiously optimistic” a sustainable recovery is underway. Reed, on the other hand, is stridently upbeat, letting her on-the-ground contact with real businesses inform the argument about what shape the post-crisis world will assume.

“I talk to companies around the world all the time and from everything I hear it’s a V-shaped recovery,” she says.

Factories, Reed says, are firing up again; manufacturing orders are coming through; the world is spinning a little faster.

“It’s amazing to say, but this is just a normal economic cycle,” she says.

“It was a little scary on the downside, but we’re having the rebound now.”