At the beginning of the year, the overwhelming consensus on the markets was that equity markets were set to grind higher, by around 10 per cent by the end of 2020. The outlook was predicated on the grounds of low and potentially lower interest rates, and modest fiscal stimulus expectations in the US and the UK. There was hope that Europe, and especially Germany, would move towards a more expansive fiscal stance. And then Covid-19 arrived on the scene. Markets were initially slow to react to events in China, and so too were governments in the West. When reality finally…