So the Magic Kingdom and The Galactic Empire are to join ‘forces’ in a $4 Billion deal. While it appears to make commercial sense for both sides will we be able to cope with the reworking of the franchises? Will it be a case of ‘Snow White and the Seven Jedi Knights’ (not sure about the censor’s rating on that) or ‘Revenge of the Muppets’ (a light-hearted look at death and destruction as a band of hand puppets take on Darth Vader) – the variations, God help us, look endless.

The park feels a bit empty when someone, particularly the size of Wall Street, doesn’t come out to play. Late last night local time, ‘post-tropical cyclone’ Sandy was reported to be within 10 miles of Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is already cracked so we must hope it won’t suffer further damage.

Here’s hoping that the 60 million residents along the U.S. East coast and inland get off lightly as Hurricane Sandy blows in with wind speeds hitting 75 miles per hour. A special set of conditions, including a full moon, could result in a tidal surge of eleven feet or more. The storm system’s winds are a mind-boggling 500 miles across and influencing an estimated area of around 1,000 miles in diameter, making it one of the largest storms ever to hit North America. Given the huge potential for damage, this has prompted the large-scale evacuation of people and the cancellation of equity trading on all U.S. exchanges today.

Thankfully, U.K. third-quarter GDP came in positive and, at plus 1% quarter-on-quarter subject to revision, ahead of consensus estimate. Of this, an estimated 0.2% was due to the one-off boost from the Olympics (which, presumably, we won’t be hosting again this year). As much as another 0.5% could have been due to bounce-back after the impact of the Queen’s Jubilee Holiday in the second quarter. This leaves about 0.3% growth which may be enough to prompt the Bank of England not to extend Quantitative Easing in November but may not stop the economy turning negative again in Q4. We travel hopefully but, realistically, growth and a return to more normal levels of economic performance are going to be hard won. The FTSE 100 Index closed all square at the day’s end.

Despite the Prime Minister’s denials, David Cameron virtually let the cat out of the bag in parliament yesterday that today’s release of the U.K. GDP number for the third quarter would show an encouraging return to growth, implying an end of the recession after the two previous quarters of contraction. For someone desperate for any good news, he may be forgiven for exaggeration because the markets are already assuming Q3 growth of around 0.6% to 0.8%, compared with the previous quarter, to leave the year-on-year trend for the economy at around minus 0.5%.

It has to be said, yesterday turned out to be quite a poor one for markets as the weight of negative pointers finally dragged down sentiment. The S&P 500 and FTSE 100 indices both fell by 1.44% with the Euro Stoxx 50 and DAX indices both 2.1% lower. The stand-out exception was Hong Kong which was closed for a holiday. After a small drop this morning, the Hang Seng Index has continued its breakout, as we identified two days ago, and has closed 0.3% higher today at the 21,764 level.

The S&P 500 Index, at just under 1,434, is balancing on a knife-edge. Technical analysts variously point to the index being close to breaking down through the 50-day moving average or through the trend line in place for the last five months since early-June. As Wall Street contends with third-quarter corporate results, some good-some bad, this is a battle front for the soul of the markets.

This morning in London has really evoked John Keats’ resonant line ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ to depict the onset of Autumn – the Fall – as the City’s buildings hover, half-seen, in the moisture-heavy air. As markets continue to twist and turn, it’s good to have a little lyricism to draw on from time to time. Whether the markets can be described as lyrical is another issue but what is clear is that the underlying rhythm is a staccato as corporate results and economic releases switch between well-received and diabolically disappointing.

After yesterday’s events, there is a distinct possibility that the verb ‘to google’ – that is, to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web – will take on a new meaning, at least in the minds of those involved in U.S equities. Given its passing similarity to the word ‘juggle’ , a form of redefinition could be ‘to drop a ball unintentionally, with dramatic consequences’.

European leaders are due to convene in Brussels for the latest Summit, scheduled to run over the next two days. It had been hoped that this event would bring crystallisation on the debt positions of Greece and Spain but there are now some doubts that this will be the case. Furthermore, given that bond yields for Spanish and Greek sovereign debt have eased in the past 48 hours, the pressure on delegates to make progress on the longer term issue of the banking union for Europe would appear to have eased in the short term. For markets, it is important that a sense of constructive activity emerges.

The global recession is making its impact on popular food operations in interesting and varied ways. According to a report on Bloomberg this morning, the company behind coke (as in dark, fizzy) in Greece and the world’s second-largest coke bottler, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling, is to move its stock market quote from Athens to London next year. Apart from the implied loss of liquidity, it is expected to leave the Greek stock market smaller than Vietnam’s.

In the event, Wall Street took heart from the September retail sales figures which showed a gain of 1.1% on August and against expectations of 0.8%. Sentiment was also boosted by above-expectation third quarter results from Citigroup which reflected strong fixed income trading revenue growth and more evidence of cost-cutting at the banking group. The shares closed 5.5% higher, helping the S&P 500 Index to a 0.8% rise on the day.

In the past few months, the mindset of equity markets has shifted from ‘even bad news is good news’ (on the basis that news bad enough would force policymakers’ hands to inject stimulus) to an ‘even good news is not good enough (to lift markets)’ mentality. While the current attitude might look healthier and more normal to a market psychologist, it still suggests that we are in a mini-bear phase rather than just another short-term trading decline as the perception of a deeper global economic slowdown takes hold. Markets generally closed around 2% last week as investors appeared to ignore potentially good news.

Rather like trying to pin down Lewis Carroll’s grinning, disappearing and reappearing, Cheshire Cat, identifying the prominent relevant drivers behind Thursday’s market action is tricky. European markets and the FTSE 100 staged a spirited rally yesterday on the growing perception that regulatory requirements for banks might be eased to counter the impact of austerity measures. In a similar vein, the pace of austerity implementation in the face of weak economic activity was questioned by I.M.F. head Christine Lagarde at a meeting in Tokyo alongside the gathering of European Finance Ministers, much to the consternation of Germany’s Finance Minister, Wolgang Schauble.

For many Wall Street-watchers, the Dow Jones industrial Average Index (DJIA) has at times carried a mystical status after years of association with big events in the history of the market, the nation and the world. However, today’s more statistically sophisticated investors generally recognise that using an index which is share price-weighted and based on the shares of just 30 companies is, at best, a shorthand indicator for the market. It is for this reason that the much broader average market capitalisation-weighted Standard and Poor’s 500 Index is referred to for what should be a more accurate view of what is going on in U.S. equities. That said, a fall of over 100 points in the Dow can still feel quite emotive and still tends to catch the eye.