Investors are daring to hope for some stability in the stockmarket

By Alice Fulwood

In “The gap in the curtain”, a novel written by John Buchan in 1932, a scientist picks five subjects who are shown the front page of a newspaper, one year in the future—the figurative gap in the curtain of time which gives the book its title. Two see their own obituaries and spend the next year driving themselves mad in their efforts to prevent their fate. As the day arrives one realises he was mistaken: it was not his obituary, but one for a man of the same name.