Italian government bonds have returned as much as 11 percent this year, becoming one of the best assets in global financial markets (forget stocks, global equities have risen  just over 7 percent).

But prospective (and existing) buyers of Italy’s high-yielding debt have to face fears that they may get caught up in a wave of forced selling in the Italian paper involving as much as 140 billion euros.

UK private bank Coutts (established in 1622, the year of the Glencore Massacre and two years before the Bank of England was founded) has been very bearish.

It still attaches a high, 25 percent chance to a partial or complete euro zone breakup and has been recommending its investors to position very defensively.