Market News – October 2018

Compared to the drama of the previous week, markets were restrained, as US earnings settled nerves. The disruptor has been disrupted. Sears, Roebuck and Company was founded in 1892, selling a huge range of products by mail order:  bicycles, sewing machines, cars, then fridges, groceries and cooking stoves too. In short, Sears provided ordinary consumers with the capacity to order a huge range of affordable goods from home. Sound familiar? With the dazzling rise of Amazon in recent years, it certainly should do. But it is the rise of Amazon – and, in earlier years, Walmart – that best explains the fact that, last week, the queen of 20th century Read more…