The summer months are a time for taking a break, basking in the sunshine with friends and family, and financial markets going loopy for little or no obvious reason.

As we approach the season in the northern hemisphere and markets start their usual process of thinning out and flapping around, there’s every danger of some kind of flare-up in the coming months. 

An amuse bouche for that came last week with some peculiar movements in the Japanese yen. Generally speaking, the yen is one of the currencies, along with the dollar and the Swiss franc, that performs pretty well in times of stress. It’s not a haven as such, but the folklore in markets is that during turbulent or scary periods, Japanese investors bring home their funds parked in overseas assets, pulling up the yen in tow.