"All of this is coming after a pretty lengthy period of strength," said Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York.
"I feel that every major breakthrough with my running has come after a period of strength training," he said.
Britain's car industry has enjoyed a period of strength over recent years, as cheap finance deals and more efficient models attract consumers.
Hence, in the absence of other news it looks like oil and gold may have made a temporary top, stocks could be due a mini-recovery and the dollar may see an extended period of strength.
Along with celebrity chefs, Russian oligarchs and Italian soccer coaches, hedge funds that established operations here in the last decade have been viewed as a mark of London's new hip spirit of decadent cool — a notion reinforced by the British pound's long period of strength and a housing boom.
The once soaring Turkish stock market has fallen about 9 percent in the past week, interest rates are on the rise and, crucially, after a period of strength, the currency, the lira, has lost 8 percent in recent months and 1 percent just since the protests began.
The declines, which were minor, follow a period of strength for the world markets, propelled in part by a flood of money from private equity funds into takeovers.
High issuance often heralds falling share prices; low figures tend to precede periods of market strength.
During periods of economic strength, they argue, a government should be restrained in its spending, lest it turn a healthy economy into an unsustainably booming one.
These companies tend to do particularly well in periods of economic strength and particularly badly in a recessionary environment.
