Showing posts with label 1987 Crash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1987 Crash. Show all posts

Thursday 16 January 2020

Stay in Touch with the Market: Opportunities and Dangers

Some investors buy and hold for the long term, stashing their securities in the proverbial vault for years. While such a strategy may have made sense at some time in the past, it seems misguided today. This is because the financial markets are prolific creators of investment opportunities. 

  • Investors who are out of touch with the markets will find it difficult to be in touch with buying and selling opportunities regularly created by the markets. 
  • Today with so many market participants having little or no fundamental knowledge of the businesses their investments represent, opportunities to buy and sell seem to present themselves at a rapid pace. 
  • Given the geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties we face in the early 1990s and are likely to continue to face in the future, why would abstaining from trading be better than periodically reviewing one's holdings? 


Being in touch with the market does pose dangers, however.
  • Investors can become obsessed, for example, with every market uptick and downtick and eventually succumb to short-term-oriented trading. 
  • There is a tendency to be swayed by recent market action, going with the herd rather than against it. 
  • Investors unable to resist such impulses should probably not stay in close touch with the market; they would be well advised to turn their investable assets over to a financial professionaL 


Another hazard of proximity to the market is exposure to stockbrokers.

  • Brokers can be a source of market information, trading ideas, and even useful investment research. 
  • Many, however, are in business primarily for the next trade. 
  • Investors may choose to listen to the advice of brokers but should certainly confirm everything that they say. 
  • Never base a portfolio decision solely on a broker's advice, and always feel free to say no.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

A Look Back at Black Monday 1987

After the Crash - Wall Street Week Oct. 23, 1987

The Wall Street Week episode from Friday October 23, 1987 just after the market crash on black Monday October 19. Hosted by Louis Rukeyser, guests included John Templeton, Steven Einhorn and William Schreyer.

Part 2 - Excellent advice from John Templeton.





Reliving the Crash of 87

The Nightly Business Report episode from Black Monday, October 19, 1987. The Dow Jones Average dropped by more than 22% that day to close at 1,738 with volume double the previous record (set the preceding Friday). Just two months earlier the average had peaked at 2,722, a level it would not see again for two years and would revisit for the final time in early 1991.





Saturday 3 December 2011

Lessons from the '87 Crash

SPECIAL REPORT October 11, 2007

Lessons from the '87 Crash

Enjoying the Dow's record run? Don't get too comfy. The market's Black Monday breakdown is a reminder of how quickly investor sentiment can turn

by Ben Steverman

As major stock indexes hit all-time highs, it's worth looking back 20 years to a far gloomier time, when investors were cruelly and suddenly reminded that the value of their investments can depend on something as unpredictable as a mood swing.

Every once in a while, fear, snowballing into panic, sweeps financial markets—the stock market crash of October, 1987, now celebrating its 20th birthday, is a prime example.

In the five trading sessions from Oct. 13 to Oct. 19, 1987, the Dow Jones industrial average lost a third of its value and about $1 trillion of U.S. stock market value was wiped out. The losses culminated in a panic-stricken 22.6% decline in the Dow on Black Monday, Oct. 19. The traumatic drop raised recession fears and had some preparing for another Great Depression.

Stock market crashes were nothing new in 1987, but previous financial crises—in 1929, for example—often reflected fundamental problems in the U.S. economy.

MYSTERIOUS MELTDOWN
The market's nervous breakdown in 1987 is much harder to explain. Especially in light of what came next: After a couple months of gyrations, the markets started bouncing back. The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index ended 1987 with a modest 2.59% gain. And in less than two years, stocks had returned to their pre-crash, summer of 1987 heights.

More importantly for most Americans, the U.S. economy kept humming along. Corporate profits barely flinched.

To this day, no one really knows for sure why the markets chose Oct. 19 to crash. Finance Professor Paolo Pasquariello of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business says the mystery behind 1987 prompted scholars to come up with new ways of studying financial crises. Instead of just focusing on economic fundamentals, they put more attention on the "market microstructure," the ways people trade and the process by which the market forms asset prices.

True, in hindsight there are plenty of adequate reasons for the '87 crash. Stocks had soared through much of 1987, hitting perhaps unsustainable levels: In historical terms, stock prices were way ahead of corporate profits. New trading technology and unproven investing strategies put strain on the market. There were worries about the economic impact of tensions in the Persian Gulf and bills being considered in Congress.

OUT OF SORTS
But for whatever reason, the mood on Wall Street shifted suddenly, and everyone tried to sell stocks at once. "Something just clicked," says Chris Lamoureux, finance professor at the University of Arizona. "It would be like a whole crowded theater trying to get out of one exit door."

It's a fairly common phenomenon on financial markets. Every stock transaction needs a buyer or a seller. When news or a mood shift causes a shortage of either buyers or sellers in the market, stock prices can surge or plunge quickly. Most of the time, balance is quickly restored. Lower prices draw in new buyers looking for a bargain, for example.

Sometimes, as in 1987 and many other true crises, things get out of hand. What happens at these moments is a mystery that may be best explained by dynamics deep within human nature.

Usually, explains behavioral finance expert Hersh Shefrin, a professor at Santa Clara University, investors believe they understand the world. In a crisis, "something dramatically different happens and we lose our confidence," Shefrin says. "Panic is basically a loss of self-control. Fear takes over."

BUYERS AND SELLERS
Why don't smart investors, seeing others panic and sell stocks, step in to buy them up at a bargain?

First, it's very hard, in the midst of a crisis, to tell whether markets are acting rationally or irrationally. Buyers refused to enter credit markets this summer on fears about risky mortgage debt. It will take months, maybe years, to add up the full impact of losses on subprime loans.

It's also tough to think rationally yourself. "It's hard to keep your emotions in check when your money is on the line," Shefrin says.

And, even if you're confident the panicked market is giving you a buying opportunity, you're likely to want to wait until it hits bottom. If a market is in free fall, buying stocks on the way down is likely to give you instant losses.

Not only will buyers hold back. A falling market will bring many more sellers out of the woodwork. Leverage is one reason: Many investors buy stocks on borrowed money, so they can't afford to lose as much without facing bankruptcy.

This is one explanation for the temporary, sharp drops in many financial markets in the summer of 2007. Losses on leveraged mortgage debt prompted many hedge funds to dump all sorts of assets to raise cash.

THERAPY FOR A PANICKED MARKET
The solution to a panicked market, many say, is slowing down the herd of frightened investors all running in the same direction. New stock market rules instituted since 1987 pause trading after big losses. For example, U.S. securities markets institute trading halts when stock losses reach 10% in any trading session. "If you give people enough time, maybe they will figure out nothing fundamental is going on," University of Michigan's Pasquariello says.

There's another form of therapy for overly emotional markets: information. In 1929 and during other early financial crises, there were no computer systems, economic data were scarce, and corporate financial reporting was suspect. "The only thing people knew in the 1920s was there was a panic and everybody was selling," says Reena Aggarwal, finance professor at Georgetown University. "There was far less information available." In 1987, and even more today, investors had places to get more solid data on the market and the economy, giving them more courage not to follow the herd. That's one reason markets found it so easy to shrug off the effects of 1987, Aggarwal adds.

You can slow markets down, reform trading rules, and tap into extra information, but financial panics may never go away. It seems to be part of our collective human nature to occasionally reassess a situation, panic, and then all act at once.

Many see the markets as a precarious balance between fear and greed. Or, alternatively, irrational exuberance and unwarranted pessimism. "All you need is a shift in mass that's just big enough to push you toward the tipping point," Shefrin says.

IN FOR THE LONG HAUL
What should an individual investor do in the event of a financial crisis? If you're really sure that something fundamental has changed and the economy is heading toward recession or even another depression, it's probably in your interest to sell. But most experts advise waiting and doing nothing. "In volatile times, it is very likely that you [will be] the goat that other people are taking advantage of," University of Arizona's Lamoureux says. "It's often a very dangerous time to be trading."

Shefrin adds: "The chances of you doing the right thing are low." Don't think short-term, he says, and remind yourself of the long-term averages. For example, in any given year, stock markets have a two in three chance of moving higher. Other than that, it's nearly impossible to predict the future.

So, another financial panic may be inevitable. But relax: There's probably nothing you can do about it anyway. Anything you do might make your situation worse. So the best advice may be to send flowers to your stressed-out stockbroker, stick with your long-term investment strategy, and sit back and watch the market's roller-coaster ride.

Steverman is a reporter for BusinessWeek's Investing channel .

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/content/oct2007/pi20071011_494930.htm

Tuesday 15 February 2011

If stock markets or stocks crash, WHO will benefit the most?

Those who bought during bubbles become paupers during crashes.

Those who bought during crashes become millionaires when the market reverses.

Wealth is destroyed by bubbles and created from crashes.

Your potential returns are a function of price you paid for the stocks offered by the market.

Those who will be investing for a long time will like the stock market when it is on CHEAP SALE.

Those who need to cash out significantly for various reasons during crashes will be the losers.

Sunday 9 May 2010

The FAT FINGER Incident. Why the market crashed on 6th May 2010?

So what happened? Details were still fuzzy last night as of this writing, but it looks like the event will become known as the fat finger event. A trader at Citi entered an order to sell 15 million shares of a security (not an outrageous amount), but accidental typed billion. Traders all over the globe saw the huge sell order and followed suit assuming Citi knew something. A massive selloff ensued. Part of the issue is because a lot of sophisticated traders use stop-loss order to limit themselves from losing too much in a massive selloff. Say I owned stock in Google and wanted to protect myself from losing too much money if the stock lost value. Earlier this week Google was trading around $530. So maybe I decided if the price dropped to $500 I’d sell my position. When the massive selloff occurred Google dropped to $500 so my stop loss order was triggered. All over the world millions of stop-loss orders like this were triggered so the market was flooded with sell orders and the price of everything tanked. Though it was fantasy trading, I had quite a few stop loss orders triggered as well.

In the high paced world of trading, with lightning fast computers, and herd mentalities, in a matter of minutes almost 10% of the value of the US stock market was wiped out. This 2.5 minute video shows how quickly it happened, and makes Jim Cramer look like the savior of the market. He literally calls the selloff ridiculous, and then people just started buying.
















The FAT FINGER Incident

Monday 25 May 2009

Reap the benefits of market volatility

Reap the benefits of market volatility

When stocks are collapsing, worst-case scenarios loom large in investors' minds. On May 6, 1932, after stocks had plummeted 85% from their 1929 high, Dean Witter issued the following memo to its clients:

"There are only two premises which are tenable as to the future. Either we are going to have chaos or else recovery. The former theory is foolish. If chaos ensues, nothing will maintain value; neither bonds nor stocks nor bank deposits nor gold will remain valuable. Real estate will be a worthless asset because titles will be insecure. No policy can be based upon this impossible contingency. Policy must therfore be predicated upon the theory of recovery. The present is not the first depression; it may be the worst, but just as surely as conditions have righted themselves in the past and have gradually readjusted to normal, so this will again occur. The only uncertainty is WHEN it will occur.... I wish to say emphatically that in a few years present prices will appear as ridiculously low as 1929 values appear fantastically high."

Two months later the stock market hit its all time low and rallied strongly. In retrospect, these words reflected great wisdom and sound judgment about the temporary dislocations of stock prices. Yet, at the time they were uttered, investors were so disenchanted with stocks and so filled with doom and gloom that the message fell on deaf ears. Investors often overreact to short-term events and fail to take the long view of the market.

1987 Crash v.s. 1929 Crash

Despite the drama of the October 1987 market collapse, which often has been compared with 1929, there was amazingly little lasting effect on the world economy or even the financial markets. Because this stock market crash did not augur either a further collapse in stock prices or a decline in economic activity, it probably will never attain the notoriety of the crash of 1929. Yet its lesson is perhaps more important: Economic safeguards, such as prompt Federal Reserve action to provide liquidity to the economy and ensure the financial markets, can prevent an economic debacle of the kind that beset our economy during the Great Depression.

This does not mean that the markets are exempt from violent fluctuations. Since the future will always be uncertain, psychology and sentiment often dominate economic fundamentals. As Keynes perceptively stated 60 years ago in The General Theory, "The outstanding fact is the extreme precariousness of the basis of knowledge on which our estimates of prospective yield have to be made." Precarious estimates are subject to sudden change, and prices in free markets will always be volatile. But history has show that investors who are willing to step into the market when others are panicking to leave reap the benefits of market volatility.