Monday October 19th 1987 – Black Monday.
There was a big storm on a Thursday night and very few people made it into work the next day. On that day the Dow crashed late on but it wasn’t until the Monday that anyone in London could react.
Black Monday was carnage. We were totally inundated with orders from the moment we got in, many getting in late due to trains being fucked by the storm. I remember looking around at this room full of people that had never even seen a bear market. They looked shell-shocked. “Nightmare on Old Broad Street” as Dave Lee-Williams said (how do I remember all these names?!).
Once again, my relative new-ness to the game and the naivety that went with it meant I thought it was bloody fantastic! We were so busy… The prices on the screens were totally out of kilter with the prices being quoted if/when we got through to anyone willing to pick up the phone. But if you got a quote you dealt, pretty much…
The next day continued in the same vein and I was sent up to Smith New Court’s offices, to be the other end of an open line so James Capel could execute orders with the “small orders” desk there. The “Smiths Small Orders Desk”: Now this lot were basically a bunch of hooligans. In a good way. I spent the whole day up there before, once the market had closed, they gaffer-taped me to a chair and stuck me in the lift for a ride!
According to Wikipedia: “Stocks then continued to fall, albeit at a less precipitous rate, until reaching a trough in mid-November at 36 percent below its pre-crash peak. Stocks did not begin to recover until 1989”.
And of course we’ve seen “crashes” since, but none with the swiftness of this particular occasion.
Clive Lambert FSTA – FuturesTechs
25 years of institutional expertise in the UK and European Energy Markets and 10-time Technical Analysis award winner. Clive provides industry-standard technical outlook, utilising Market Profile and Candlesticks Analysis for over 100 global trading desks.
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