Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are human tragedies and economic disasters about which most individual investors can do precisely nothing.

But you didn’t come here for a counsel of despair, when you can get plenty of that elsewhere. More positively, it’s an ill wind that blows no good and even violent confrontation can produce winners as well as losers.

Most immediately, while the world waits to find out what will happen next in Kiev or the Strait of Hormuz, Europe is doing more to prepare for our own defence.