31 OCTOBER 1987, Page 26

Roll on, quiescence

CONFIDENCE, enthusiasm, panic, funk — that (I was saying) is the market cycle, with its worst moment when enthusiasm gives way to panic. Tim Congdon, the Sage of Shearsons, prefers to quote the Victo- rian banker Lord Overstone: 'The state of trade can be divided' (so Lord Overstone testified, 150 years ago) 'into successive conditions of quiescence, improvement, growing confidence, prosperity, excite- ment, overtrading, convulsion, pressure, stagnation, and distress, ending again in quiescence.' All I can add is, roll on quiescence.