October 19, 1987 - Black Monday

Today is Thursday but thirty years ago on this date -- October 19, 1987 -- the New York Stock experienced its biggest crash in history. The Dow Jones Industrial Index, something you might call "the stock market of the stock market", plunged by 508-points or 22% of the "index." 

Imagine that the value of your house evaporated by almost a quarter in a single day and you can imagine why it was a dark, dark day on The Street, recorded by history as Black Monday.

What caused it? Many explanations: a weak dollar, investor fears of inflation, conflicts in the Middle East (i.e. unpredictable oil prices), and the vagaries computer trading. News reports, like the one above, assaulted viewers with terms like "S&P 500", "market capitalization", "index funds", blah blah blah, trying to make sense of the madness. But the market quickly recovered and the Go-Go '80s soon became the Go-Go '90s.

Of course, 21 years later, in the fall of 2008, the market would yet again crash due to the collapse of the housing market and nonsense of the the big banks. This would lead to the Great Recession that we are still, almost a decade later, recovering from.

So October 19, 1987, Black Monday, was a sad one indeed but, ultimately, one of the good ol' days.