There’s disarray, and then there’s 2025. But even by this year’s standards of financial bedlam, the last few days managed to leave most desks blinking.

The yen collapsed. The dollar rallied. Gold went vertical. France flinched. And hedge funds, which had finally found peace betting on a soft dollar, hard gold, and gently strengthening yen, suddenly remembered what real volatility feels like.

Japan, ever the quietly dangerous mover, flipped the script when Thatcherite Sanae Takaichi smashed the glass ceiling and got in line to be the country’s first female prime minister – setting up a US-style confrontation with the central bank over interest rates.

Markets were expecting a mildly reformist continuation after the leadership shuffle. What they got instead was a clear mandate for more fiscal expansion and, possibly, even less urgency at the Bank of Japan. That alone was enough for the yen to break lower, fast.

Enter: the resurrection of the yen carry trade.

Suddenly, the name Mrs Watanabe was back in the financial press. Originally, a nickname for Japan’s middle-class housewives who actively traded foreign exchange markets from their homes to generate yield, she became a symbol of retail sophistication and........

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