I really don’t see what the fuss is about. Just as this article points out in terms of %, Thursday doesn’t even register as an historically large down day. In a year we’ll forget all about last week, and be eyeing the next bubble that is forming. Remember how 9/11 was supposed to change trading forever?
clipped from www.financialsense.com
Investigations after the October 19, 1987 crash revealed that what would have been a normal down day in a correction that had begun in August was turned into the heart-stopping, portfolio destroying 1987 crash by uncontrolled automated waves of sell-programs that flooded in from program-trading firms and overwhelmed the market.
By the way, I’m hearing a lot of claims that last Thursday’s ‘crash’ was the worst ever. It was not even close. Yes, the Dow was down 1000 points intraday at its low, compared to it being down ‘only’ 502 points at its close on the 1987 crash day. But the Dow was just above 2,200 at the time. The 502 point decline was a 22.6% loss for the day, compared to less than 10% at the low on Thursday, and only 3.2% at the close.
  blog it