On this day in New York · October 19, 1987
The Dow's Worst Day
On a Monday morning on Wall Street, the stock market didn't dip, it fell off a cliff, and nobody down there had ever seen anything like it.
The facts
- Date
- October 19, 1987 (Monday)
- Dow Jones drop
- 508 points, or 22.6 percent, the largest one-day percentage decline in its history
- Dow close
- 1,738.74, down from an open of 2,246.74
- S&P 500 drop
- 20.47 percent
- Global losses
- an estimated $1.71 trillion worldwide
On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 508 points, or 22.6 percent, in a single trading session at the New York Stock Exchange, its worst one-day percentage loss ever, worse even than the crash that opened the Great Depression. The index closed at 1,738.74 after opening at 2,246.74, and the sell orders piled up so fast that 95 of the S&P 500's stocks and 11 of the 30 Dow stocks couldn't even open on time. Traders on the floor watched their screens fall behind the actual prices as computer systems buckled under the volume. The panic wasn't just a New York problem: stock markets from Hong Kong to London cratered the same day, and the world lost an estimated $1.71 trillion in a matter of hours. By the next morning, with the financial system rattled, the Federal Reserve stepped in to calm the markets down.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
The Federal Reserve, consistent with its responsibilities as the Nation's central bank, affirmed today its readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system
Federal Reserve statement issued the morning of October 20, 1987, under Chairman Alan Greenspan
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The crash pushed the New York Stock Exchange to adopt circuit breakers in 1988, the trading curbs that still kick in today whenever prices fall fast enough to threaten another one-day meltdown.
Sources
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