After seven years of stock markets climbing ever upwards, investors found a new reason to buy in November: the shock election of Donald Trump.

One oft-repeated anecdote is how the billionaire investor Carl Icahn left Mr Trump’s victory party to buy US stocks. A few days later Stanley Druckenmiller, who earlier in the year told a conference for fellow hedge fund managers to “get out of the stock market”, announced he had sold all of his gold on election night and liked sectors of the stock market tied to economic growth.

Republican control of the executive and legislative branches of the Federal government will mean tax cuts, infrastructure spending and higher interest rates, in the snap market assessment of a jumble of campaign promises and nominations set to produce the richest cabinet in history.