Market convulsions that briefly wiped more than $1tn from Japan’s main stock index and sent shares in megacap tech groups plummeting have been blamed on a cocktail of factors, from the unwinding of the yen carry trade to fears of an impending US recession.

But for those managing the rout, the crisis was shaped by a seasonal workplace quirk: summer holidays.

Senior investors scrambled to respond to the global sell-off from their holiday homes, and junior traders struggled to keep up with the unfolding chaos as markets plunged then recovered this week. Those left at their desks said a lack of liquidity — the volume of money shifting around world financial markets, slowed by thin staffing over the holidays — made the market ructions worse.