During the past week, the world’s financial markets have been at their most volatile since July last year, sending a shockwave of headlines around the world.

The scaremongering led to panic as investors tried to second-guess the direction of markets, sectors and indices.

However, while volatility led to what has been termed a ‘significant correction’ by market analysts, most economists have been telling investors that they shouldn’t be worried.

Despite this, experts are in broad agreement that this volatility is likely to continue for a few more weeks until around mid September when institutional decision makers return from their holidays.

Phil Poole, global head of macro and investment strategy at HSBC, says the absence of such key individuals affects market liquidity, which is, in itself, necessary for market stability and confidence.

He explains, ‘You don’t have the liquidity and that is a pre-requisite. However, if you look outside of the financial sector (where the big risks still appear to be because of funding and interconnectivity), the rest of the market looks cheap on a historical basis.

‘It is probably a decent time to be addition selectively to positions, but if you are a retail investor sat on the beach, then you are probably not going to be that focussed on your portfolio.

‘I would argue that many of these markets now look very cheap and not just in the last week – the emerging markets, for example, have been selling off for much of the year.

‘In European markets, we are seeing a bit of a bounce at the moment, but this is still a very substantial correction.’

Tremours felt by the market at the start of the week after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the long-term credit rating of the United States to AA+ from AAA have been overdone according to Poole in his role as HSBC’s head of investment strategy.

He explains, ‘There are still two out of three of the main ratings agencies awarding a AAA rating and a downgrade from AAA to AA+ in terms of default risk is not such a huge deterioration in credit quality.

‘After all, the whole issue of debt in the developed world is a long-term work out – a ten year problem, in my view. In the pre-crisis period, western economies were living beyond their means, now we have the bill to pay.

‘But the UK and the Germans are ahead of the game in cutting the deficit. The period of adjustment has been front loaded in the UK, so of course the data will look worse than an economy like the US where a fiscal stimulus has been supporting the economy.

‘In Europe, you have seen governments biting the bullet but it means that it will be a difficult next year to 18 months and there is going to be low growth, high unemployment and all sorts of pressures.’