Today, October 19, 2007, is the 20th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash, still the worst one-day percentage drop in NYSE history. The NYSE itself has embraced the event in part by e-mailing to all financial reporters several spreadsheets (here, here and here) detailing just how far it's come since then, which indeed is pretty far.
Commentators at blogs, newspapers and magazines have offered everything from warnings that current conditions look similar to 1987, to snickering that it was a great day to buy. Conrad de Aenelle in the NYT goes into some detail from Henry J. Herrmann, chief executive of Waddell & Reed, on the similarities. Jaclyne Badal at the WSJ ($ req) leads on the perfect-hindsight fact that "Black Monday" turned out to be one of the best stock-buying days in history. Tim Paradis at The Associated Press neatly summarizes all the retrospective, and prospective, thoughts.
One comment caught our eye from Citigroup Inc. strategist Tobias Levkovich, quoted in the New York Post: "That kind of crash doesn't happen when people are worried about everything, but when they are euphoric about everything."
In other words, anxiety is good? That may not be quite as resonant at "greed is good" (a la Gordon Gekko and Ivan Boesky) but perhaps it's more appropos today than Oliver Stone's epithet for the 1980s.
