Look at it. Just look at it. We should frame this chart: printing industry shipments for October 2018 were well up from September, and above from October 2017. October has been by far the best month of 2018, and in fact the best month we’ve had since November 2016. It’s shaping up that October is turning out to be the best month of the year for printing industry shipments in general—in three out of the past four years shipments peaked in October.

We are back to making up some ground: on a year-to-date (January-to-October) basis, 2018 comes in at $66.2 billion, while 2017 January-to-October shipments came in at $67.0 billion (all dollars adjusted for inflation).

The bad news, though, is that if recent trends continue, November and December are going to be bad months. We’d be happy to be wrong.

(If you missed it, be sure to check out last Wednesday’s economics webinar.)