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The investment herd is scattering again in a sign of less stressful times, encouraged by resolute central bank protection even if scarce growth and jobs may deter funds from straying too far.

One of the defining features of the crisis of the past six years has been hyper-correlation of global markets – where assets as diverse as equities and commodities, high-yield debt or emerging markets moved in lockstep as fears for the stability of the global financial system ebbed and flowed.

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Investment decisions everywhere became binary, captured by a dominant swing between ‘risk on’ or ‘risk off’, or RORO for lovers of acronyms, on developments as far afield as Athens, Beijing or Washington.

The metronome looks to have broken down in 2013 however. Investors appear convinced by 2012’s open-ended commitment from the world’s three biggest central banks to do ‘whatever it takes’, in European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi’s phrase, to stabilise financial systems and reflate depressed economies.