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2o Years Ago Today…
By JLP | October 19, 2007
the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6% of its value in one day.
To put that drop in perspective, if the same percentage drop were to occur today, this is what it would look like:
Wow! A 3,100 point drop! Can you imagine?
Could something like that happen today? I doubt it but it could happen over a period of time.
One last little tidbit…
Here’s what the percentage change would look like if the Dow lost 507.99 points today:
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So, a 500 point drop today would only represent a -3.66% change. Yeah, it’s still a big drop point-wise, but not nearly as big as it was in 1987.
Topics: Investing | 10 Comments »
October 19th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Supposedly there is a system in place that halts trading for 2 hours if it drops over 20%. If it drops 20% after 2PM the market shuts down for the day. It can’t happen anymore, at least not in a single day.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
When the stock markets opened again after the 9/11 attacks, there was a big selloff and I’m thinking that the trading halts that Chris is talking about went into effect. But my memory is not what it once was . . .
October 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Nothing’s impossible but I think it would be unlikely to happen in a single day if it did happen. We’d probably see sustained falls for a few weeks instead.
October 19th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
buying opportunity.
October 20th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
[...] JLP talks to us about Black Monday 20 years ago. Scary retrospective. [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 6:06 pm
[...] AllFinancialMatters reminds us of a dark day in the market’s history. [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 8:23 pm
as said earlier, Wall Street will just shut down if the market starts to tank.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Here`s a video broadcast from that day :http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-73-1883-12455-11/politics_economy/twt/
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I think we will still see a drop of 8 or 10% at some point, but the trading curbs were designed to not allow that 22% loss to occur again.
October 25th, 2007 at 5:15 am
For everyone who says there is NO way it could happen again – 9/11 shut down the markets for a week and it was only through massive amounts of hard work on the part of the exchanges and some civic and governmental intervention that righted the markets. A technical drop of 20% might not happen – but imagine if the exchanges fell 5% in the first 30 minutes of trading, shutting down the exchanges … for weeks at a time. Awfully bad stuff can still happen. Just having a computer control in place can’t overcome human nature.