Thirty-Six Years Today Stock Market Crash

[street]

Yes, an interesting day.... I was at my desk doing finance work when a friend called me talking about the market dropping... me.. OK...


Then he called up an hour later... and an hour after that... and then a few minutes before close and was giving me a blow by blow reading of the DOW.... Both of us lost a good amount of our investment as we were 100% stock... both of us did nothing and our monthly buys in the 401(k) kept going so we got a discount for awhile...


Had to check and memory was wrong... the market went down to the 1700s... we have all made a good amount of money since then if we stayed in...

I was in the market also with monthly buying but never blinked an eye. I didn't change anything mostly because I really never had a clue. Sometimes doing nothing is better than trying to do something.

 

[foxfirev5]

I figured that my 401k dropped about 8k that day. Since we had an old school plan I was unable to sell for my own good. It would have involved mailing in a sell order and waiting for it to execute. Again l would rather be lucky than smart sometimes. I learned over the years to not react and honed my sloth like trading approach.

 

[thod]

I was a sophomore in college that fall. I had nothing in the market.

I think I was more worried about calculus around that time.

I do remember my father trying to figure how this affects me and my sister's tuition for the next quarter. But he just did nothing and rode it out.

 

[W2R]

I had a job interview that day with a major aerospace/defense company. Like thod in the post before this one, I had nothing in the market.

Hopeless situation. All the recruiter wanted to talk about was the stock market. All I wanted to talk about was the job.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

But a couple days before, my favorite team in all of sports. The Minnesota Twins. Had just won the World Series. That took a lot of pain out of it for me.

 

[Dtail]

I was working for Salomon Brothers at the time. There was some panic around the office. I do believe that Salomon shorted the Asian market and made a ton of money overnight.

 

[EastWest Gal]

I was chief resident at SF General Hospital and working my tail off to keep kids alive, 70-hour weeks plus on call duties. No money in the market. Almost no money at all, actually. I didn’t even notice.

 

[joesxm3]

That day I had mirror investments in Janus Funds, one IRA on taxable. I panicked and sold the IRA since I would not have to pay taxes. Years later the taxable was nearly double the IRA with mirrored DCA deposits the whole time.

Maybe misremembering which drop. Might have been a later one, but story right.

In 1987 I seem to remember working hard programming while my manager is was shorting stocks all day long and not working.

 

[bada bing]

I lost several thousand dollars that day, which was very painful at that point in my life.

I had amassed $32K in IRA retirement savings, I remember it pretty well. I didn't know anything had happened during the day, I was at work. I heard something had happened at the convenience store while buying a bottle of beer for after dinner. I rushed home and spent about an hour dialing to busy signals for the recorded fund NAV line at Strong Funds, where I had my IRA. I watched the Nightly Business Report with Paul Kangas and then that weekend Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser. I was a financially sophisticated mover-n-shaker back in those days.

Louis and Paul are long dead. I went through subjectively worse in 2000-2002 and 2008, but your first crash is memorable. And a teaching moment. I gain or loose nominally more on a typical day now than I did during the big crash back then.

 

[Walt34]

I remember hearing about if a week or so later, after things had recovered but that's about it. Maybe I was working midnights that week and it wasn't uncommon for me to pretty much disconnect from things. Anything less than WWIII starting would have probably escaped my notice.

 

[Landolink]

I was working on the bond floor of the CBOT. I started at the CBOT in June of 1987 after I graduated from college. All I remember is I got home very late that day and my Mom wanted to know why.

I was trading Treasuries in 2008/09. That was crazy [emoji13].

 

[mebden]

I had just gotten out of the Navy of active duty in September 1987 after labor day and started my 1st real civilian job in October so I had no money in the market but sure got to hear about alot of the old timers say I'm sure glad I never invested in the stock market but them I watched all these guys pretty much just retire on a SS check which I said back then I don't want to be like that so I started in Jan of 1988 and been continuing since I'd be retires already if I hadn't gotten a divorce but once I gave her 1/2 of everything I really maxed out my retirement. I try to tell all the young peeps I work around to live below your means and Invest in the company 401K so you don't have to work till your dead some listen some don't.

 

[jollystomper]

I was 8 years into my Megacorp career. I remember a slow panic spread through our Megacorp office as day went on. A TV was set up in a conference room so we could watch the news as things unraveled. There was a lot of gallows humor. One veteran employee joked that at the start of the day, he was planning to send his child to an Ivy League school, but by the end of the day community college was the affordable option.

In those days my main investment was my 401K and you had to call the find out the balance. More than few co-workers checked and wee panicked enough to say they were getting out of equities. But DW and I talked, and she kept reminding me "but, this is not money we need now, right? this is for the future, right? A lot can still happen". Plus, there was under $10K in the 401K. So we made no changes.

I still have my 401K quarterly statement for the 4th quarter of 1987. My equity funds were down 18% for that quarter. While at the time it was not fun, it happened at a good age in my life - experiencing that, and seeing it recover, kept me from panicking when future market downturns occurred, and in fact encouraged to invest more during those times.

 

[38Chevy454]

I had graduated college and was about 3 months in my new job. Can't even recall if I was invested in market at that point? I did start saving to build my rainy day fund, since I was poor broke college student when I graduated. That was just in local bank account. I do know I started the retirement savings as soon as I was eligible. Regardless, I didn't have enough in market to have any significant concerns. I was probably more concerned with my girlfriend at the time.

 

[Trailwalker]

I was in my first year of law school with nothing in the market and a negative net worth, due to student loans. My financial situation wasn't a lot different than many young adults who would experience a current crash very differently than most of the people on this forum.

 

[MarieIG]

We weren't in the market at that time. We had been in the process of saving for a down payment for a house so our savings at the time was in the bank. (Those funds were subsequently spent on school.)

 

[6miths]

I remember exactly where I was that day. I was just at the beginning of my career but was surrounded by a group of people who probably took some heavy paper losses that day. My recollection is that they took it in stride.

 

[DrRoy]

I had a home office day then and watched it happen real time. I was only about 1/3 equities and it did not hurt so bad as it might have.

 

[LateToFIRE]

I recall that day, but it had little immediate impact as I was a broke, struggling, twenty-something year old with no stocks, no assets, only few dollars in my pocket and a mountain of student loans to my name. The follow-on recession, on the other hand, was about to make my young life even more difficult.

 

[Chuckanut]

I was trading Treasuries in 2008/09. That was crazy [emoji13].

No doubt you loaded up on those long term double digit interest rate Treasuries that were easy to buy back then.

 

[Time2]

I remember the day well, I was working in electronics electronics shop in Williamston Michigan listening to WJR on the radio. It was big news that day!
At that time I think I only had about $100k invested.

 

[oldphd]

The small company I had worked for 9 years went public the week before (don't remember the day, but I think it was Wednesday or Thursday). It was my first job, and I had accumulated what stock I could over the years, all employees were allowed to purchase in the plan and matches in the 401k were mandatory company stock. When it went public I had about $200K worth of stock. That Monday it dropped 75% at one point. There was more cash per share from the offering than what it traded at the low point! Fortunately, I was patient and stayed the course, over the next several years it not only rebounded but ended up being an excellent investment over the long term. I did some diversification when it hit the public offering price.

 

[JP.mpls]

I was in the market also with monthly buying but never blinked an eye. I didn't change anything mostly because I really never had a clue. Sometimes doing nothing is better than trying to do something.

I moved about 10% of my 401k into MM, and moved all stock mutual fund holdings into the index 500. I figured the bigger companies would hold up the best. I remember being a little scared.

Ended up down about 25-30% at first, but it quickly started taking off.

I believe my total doubled within two years.
It is one reason I was able to fire at a reasonable age.

My older coworker friend was close to retiring. He sold low, and bought a bunch of annuities. Ugh.

JP

 

[JP.mpls]

But a couple days before, my favorite team in all of sports. The Minnesota Twins. Had just won the World Series. That took a lot of pain out of it for me.

I still can't believe they managed to win two WS. It was awesome.

 

[iloveyoga]

I remember it very well. I was working with defined benefit plans and most DB plans had at least some stock allocation. I think we were given information on how to respond to our clients. I learned a good lesson that day on not panicking and moving your money when the market is going down. I don't remember any of the clients that I worked with trying to move money. Didn't trading shut down for a time that day? I can't remember what they called that.