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A Crash Course in History
The current selloff is very similar to the 1987 drop. Here's how this one could turn out.
By Steven Goldberg, Contributing Columnist, Kiplinger.com
October 10, 2008
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What the market has done over the past week duplicates what happened in the one-day 1987 crash, when the Dow Jones industrial average plunged a record 23%. The week of October 6 through 10, Standard & Poor's 500-stock index plummeted 18%. Could past be prologue?
Through October 10, the S&P fell 42% from its record high exactly 12 months earlier. Since 1926, the average bear market has seen a plunge of just 38%. But what's really remarkable this time is how fast much of the damage has occurred. The S&P closed October 3 at a 24% loss from its peak. That was awful. But what followed was much worse. Since then, the S&P has lost almost as much as it lost over the entire previous year.
In 1987, the Dow peaked on August 25 at 2,722. Like other investors, I watched my investments fall in the weeks that followed. But the Dow was still at 2,508 on Tuesday, October 13 -- a loss of just 8% -- when the slide began in earnest. The Dow plunged 95 points on Wednesday, which was almost 4%. Thursday, it fell another 58 points, and Friday it lost 108 points.
The big drop came Monday, October 19. It was a 508-point crash caused mainly by leveraged derivatives-portfolio insurance-which, ironically, had promised to insulate big investors from the risk of a sharply falling market. As Wall Street fell, portfolio insurance triggered selling in stock futures in Chicago, setting up a feedback loop. By the end of the day, many Wall Street firms weren't even answering their phones.
In other words, the 1987 crash was, like the current crash, caused by financial instruments. The exotic mortgage securities billed as low-risk by Wall Street's rocket scientists are far more complex, but ultimately they had the same kind of nonsensical thinking behind them: They ostensibly offered a way to leverage up to great returns with no risk.
On October 20, 1987, the financial markets nearly collapsed. Stocks simply didn't open for trading when the market did. No one was willing to buy. Ultimately, however, the market rallied, and October 19 turned out to mark the bottom of that bear market. There wasn't even a recession. In one and a half years, the market reached a new high -- and kept rising for another ten years. (The more broadly based Standard & Poor's 500-stock index hit its bear-market bottom on December 4.)
No way we're going to get off that easy this time. Housing prices still have to fall more to attract buyers; there's still a tremendous inventory of unsold homes. What's more, it's not clear that the government's Herculean efforts to resuscitate the credit markets will succeed. In this crisis, the credit markets are far more important than the stock market. And once the credit markets revive, there's the question of how deep and how long the recession will be.
At the same time, given the depth of panic in the stock markets, I think we may well be near the bottom. Of course, I can't be sure. Indeed, I thought it was time to buy several weeks ago. But the wisest hands I know among fund managers are all finding terrific bargains among the highest-quality stocks.
Ken Heebner, one of the savviest fund managers, thinks that hedge-fund selling is behind a lot of the recent selloff. That makes sense. With their lines of credit frozen, these highly leveraged funds have had little choice but to dump stocks.
Will this decline go on another six months? Another year? It's possible, of course -- and probable, if government rescue efforts fail to gain traction.
But I have little doubt that buying stocks when panic is so widespread will look like a wise move in a couple of years or less. For those who own stocks, it's way too late to sell. For those who can afford to invest more in stocks, I think this a time to do just that-as was October 19, 1987.
Steven T. Goldberg (bio) is an investment adviser and freelance writer.
Reader Comments (7)
Posted by: Jere at 10/10/2008 09:43:48 PM
Amen.
Posted by: Yvette Hayes at 10/11/2008 12:34:27 AM
Thank you, this article is a very good reminder to keep it all in perspective. I have myself reminded relatives much younger than myself that this is like buying at 'fire sale,' especially if they are investing little by little with many years, 30+, until they need the money. I however am a little older, 42, with a husband 11 years away from retirement. We had to step back and take stock of our situation and decided to leave our investments in the market, continue 401k to the match, but stop contributing to Roths and use that money instead to pay off debt and save 'safe' cash for the next 15 months.
Posted by: seyelda at 10/11/2008 03:11:30 PM
IN 1987 I lost $50,000 in a few days. I doubled my investment and made it all back plus in a few weeks. 2008 is not 1987. We did not have millions of people losing their homes. We did not have massive unemployment as we will soon have. We did not have the massive national debt we now have. Indeed even personal debt was considerably less. We did not have a phony war costing us 10 billion+ a month. Comparing 2008 to 1987 is not only wrong it is financially dangerous. Stay out of the market until you are quite certain it has turned. Trying to catch the bottom is both wrong and unnecessary.
Posted by: D2MFP at 10/12/2008 06:56:20 PM
...wake up people, no mcain, no hockey mom veep...let's put some visionaries in the white house that actually care about people other than themselves...
Posted by: phil at 10/14/2008 04:22:20 PM
just got back from Hawaii. Plane going over was only 1/3 full. Hotel occupancy dropped 25 % in Hawaii. In the San Francisco area, at least 10 car dealers have gone belly up in the last 6 months.Vacant store fronts are cropping up in Palo Alto and Montery/Carmel, 2 of the most affluent areas in the entire United States. Unemployment is probably going to go over 10% within a year. No, this is not 1987. This recession will be much longer, like the'72-'74 recession, which no one under 45 even remembers. Cancel your cable, stop eating out, and pay off your debts-this is going to get VERY, VERY bad.
Posted by: d. albert at 10/15/2008 11:25:34 AM
Financial instruments did not cause the crisis....they may well have contributed to the problem, but they were not the primary cause. The cause was GIC: Greed, Ignorance, and Corruption. Greedy lenders, Ignorant borrowers living beyond their means, and Corrupt politicians & government officials...in alliance with certain investment bankers... formed the base plate of this mess.
Posted by: Joe Calhoun at 10/15/2008 10:10:31 PM
The analogy to 1987 is a good one but exotic mortgages are not the portfolio insurance of today. The culprit is the CDS market. Here's how it works: 1. Hedge fund shorts financial stock. 2. Hedge fund buys CDS on target company's bonds. 3. Seller of CDS shorts stock to hedge default risk. 4. Owners of company's bonds notice stock drop and buy CDS. 5. Seller of CDS shorts more stock to hedge. That is why the short ban worked while it was in force. No one would sell CDS on financial stocks without the ability to hedge their risk. A few large hedge funds could get together and drive Bear Stearns and Lehman out of business. I'm not saying there was collusion; it wasn't necessary. In a market this nervous, rumors sufficed to panic the market.