There is a story going around that a US investment guru went into a Starbucks last week and the man who served his double skinny latte asked if he should sell his Amazon shares.
The story may be apocryphal, like the tales of lift attendants asking what shares to buy just before the 1929 Crash. That proved a good sell signal.
This time round, however, the contrary indicator worked in the opposite direction. The apocalyptic headlines that appeared late last week may have frightened the man from Starbucks but they proved to be the signal for a healthy rally.
Yesterday, the FTSE 100 built on Friday's bounce to close 174.3 higher at 5,576.6 and mark a two-day gain of 260 points. That more than made up for the slide of the first four days of last week.
The other indices were all higher too as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq started the week well and the Nikkei and Hang Seng indices in Japan and Hong Kong also rose.
Mr Dylan Grice of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein summed up the mood of cautious optimism.
"It is very easy to erroneously read too much into one day's move. But some of the prices that got hit last week were just stupid and that is consistent with the feeling that last week's sell-off was the bottom. On the other hand, you can get very big rallies in a bear market."
Few people were brave enough to call the turn. Most strategists were happy to sit back and wait for the European Central Bank meeting later this week, the UK monetary policy committee meeting next week and maybe even the next policy shift by the US Federal Reserve before getting back into the water.
However, Lehman Brothers strategist Mr Joe Rooney increased his exposure to equities worldwide by 10 percentage points to 70 per cent. He said: "Global equity valuations have now reached a level that on average has provided an effective floor on each of five occasions over the past 15 years."
The investment bank also shifted its exposure to the tech stocks from "neutral" to "overweight". It cited Reuters, BT Spirent and WPP among its UK picks.
HSBC, which has been negative on technology stocks for a year, also turned more positive on some of the worst hit areas.
Strategist Mr Steve Russell said: "We believe telecoms are now oversold and the balance of risk has moved to the positive rather than the negative.
