Get ready to party like it's 1989...

Take a moment, investors, to mark the fall 20 years ago of the Berlin Wall - a visible, tangible end to an era, delivered in a few short episodes of confusing, inspiring, gut-wrenching events. The so-called experts fell silent, while the masses gained a voice.

Pressures in East Germany had been building for months. But on 9 November, a chance remark by a low-ranking East German official suggesting one checkpoint along the formidable Wall might be unguarded led hundreds to make a break for freedom. The drama was relayed moment by moment, for the first time, to a global audience. The entire Wall, which started out in 1961 as a barbed-wire fence, was not to be officially demolished until the summer of 1990. But tearing it down was the catalyst for, among many other things, the re-unification of East and West Germany, the end of the Cold War, the ...