Martin Vander Weyer

 Los Angeles/Seattle US stocks briefly rallied after the midterm results as markets looked favourably on a divided Congress and the possibility of cooperation between Donald Trump and House Democrats. The Fed kept interest rates on hold until next month, while remarking on strong growth and a continuing fall in unemployment. That, in a nutshell, is the economic news as I land at Los Angeles — but a more vivid update is delivered, as ever, by the talkative cab driver who takes me into the city. He’s from Mexico, and his story is a cameo of the vigour with which Americans build their own prosperity as best they can.

I dreamed I saw a monster advancing through a devastated town centre, mighty footsteps shaking semi-derelict buildings. I awoke in my armchair to find I had been reading a news item about Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley’s latest gambit: buying the 60-shop Evans Cycles chain out of administration for just £8 million, to follow his swoop on House of Fraser’s tottering department stores group in August. Say what you like about Ashley’s ruthless opportunism — he’s already said himself that half the Evans outlets will have to close — he’s the only big beast out there who’s on a mission to keep bricks-and-mortar retailing alive.

How much did Philip Hammond’s giveaway Budget help dying town centres? Not enough, say campaigners, but let’s give the Chancellor some credit. A one-third relief in business rates for retail properties with a rateable value of less than £51,000 means an annual saving of up to £8,000 for a huge number of small businesses; pubs where people still drink beer and spirits in old-fashioned style benefit from a duty freeze that one industry body says will ‘secure upwards of 3,000 jobs’; and there’s money to help convert disused premises into homes.

‘Uncertainty is draining investment from the UK, with Brexit having a negative impact on eight in ten businesses,’ says Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI. OK, let’s pause for a chorus of ‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’ But even if we shade off for ‘scaremongering’, her survey (of 236 firms) is bleak: ‘44 per cent of businesses with contingency plans intend to stockpile goods… 30 per cent intend to relocate production and services overseas… 15 per cent intend to move jobs…’ And I’ve seen no rival surveys that contradict the gist of it. So what can Monday’s Budget do to make business feel better?

The current stock-market correction has been steaming down the track since August and I claim no wisdom for having predicted it: the FTSE100 dipped below 7,000 at the start of the week, having shed all of the 10 per cent it had gained since it began to surge in April. Weaker UK growth forecasts from the EY Item Club, reflecting the impact of the Brexit impasse on business and consumer confidence, are just one factor in the autumnal mood. But let’s cheer ourselves up with a round of applause for our veteran investor Robin Andrews, whose ‘Faangs to Banngs’ trading idea I offered you on 1 September.

Today we’re in the baronial setting of Hampton Manor Hotel in Warwickshire — a long iron shot from Birmingham Airport, but happily out of earshot of the fractious Tory Party conference up the road. We’re here to meet the Midlands regional finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards: our host is Mark Embley, regional manager for our sponsor, the private bank Julius Baer, and our guests are Dr David Jehring, chief executive of Black Pear Software, Ian Firth, vice president for products at Speechmatics, and Steven Greenall, founder of Warwick Music Group. I’ve met or talked to some 16 of our 22 disruptor finalists so far, listened to their presentations, and peppered them with questions.

This week we gathered in the elegant dining room of our sponsor, the private bank Julius Baer, to meet the regional finalists from London and the South for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Award. Our host was David Durlacher, chief executive of Julius Baer International, and with him were Tracey Reddings, the bank’s head of front office, and half a dozen colleagues. Our guests represented seven of the ten regional finalists. Each was asked to talk informally, for five minutes, about their business’s potential for disruption and growth. Here’s some of what we learned. Carwow is an online platform that ‘takes the hassle out of new-car buying’ from franchise dealerships.

Our cinema is showing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and I’m reminded of a remark attributed to Mark Twain, that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes’. On 3 October 2008, three weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout for the US banking system was passed into law at the very hour when I was watching the original Mamma Mia! movie and observing the impact of a mass inoculation of feelgood on a crowd battered by frightening financial news. And it was early the following Wednesday that I heard of chancellor Alistair Darling’s de facto nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds-HBOS and his emergency liquidity scheme to keep the nation’s cash machines working. ‘See Mamma Mia!

All good things must come to an end, including summer holidays and bull markets. The bull run in US shares that began in the aftermath of the financial crisis in March 2009 has now officially passed the previous record of 3,452 more-up-than-down days from October 1990 to March 2000. This time round, the S&P500 index of US stocks has risen by more than 300 per cent — and that rise has continued throughout Donald Trump’s reign, despite his trade war threats and other follies. But it has not been reflected in major European markets, which have drifted sideways, and has been increasingly sustained by a small number of top tech stocks that have outperformed everything else on the planet.