Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser - 1987 Market Crash

Today was a walk in Park Bernanke compared to Black Monday in 1987, when the Dow lost 22% in one day.  Most older readers will remember Louis Rukeyser and Wall Street Week. There was once a time when CNBC did not exist.

In the aftermath of the 1987 crash, Rukeyser commenced with the following, “Ok, let’s start with what’s really important tonight. It’s just your money.  It’s not your life.  Everybody who really loved you a week ago still loves you tonight and that’s a heck of a lot more important than the numbers on a brokerage statement.  The robins will sing, the crocuses will bloom, babies will gurgle and puppies will curl up in your lap and drift happily to sleep; even when the stock market goes temporarily insane.  And now that that is fully in perspective let me say, ‘Ouch’, and ‘Eeek’ and ‘Medic’.  Tonight we’re going to try to make sense of mass hysteria, to look behind the Crash of '87 and most perilous, but most important of all, to look ahead.”

Appearing are Steven Einhorn from Goldman Sachs, William Shreyer Chariman of Merrill Lynch and Sir John Templeton.  Below we have the other 2 clips that completed the broadcast.  Guests are Marty Zweig, Allen Sinai and Louis Holland.

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Comments

[chris drach]

Louis was a grand old gent. Michael Lewis wrote a good article on him years ago when Loius used to take a cruise boat out with his (paying) fans and dish out sage market advice. I remember watching him during the tech bubble days in the 90's

[MXB]

I worked at the Chicago Merc in '87 and would watch Rukeyser Friday nighte because I hated him so much, he was a precursour of the bobble heads at cable stations like CNBC.

[DailyBail]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)

Read all about it.

[Cheyenne]

Given that high-frequency trading has taken over the markets, it's only a matter of time before the 1987 crash itself looks like a walk in the park:

"Allowing high-frequency trading as it is presently practiced will lead to a catastrophic market crash that will not only destroy trillions of dollars of wealth in America and around the world, it will destroy the economy in the process and ensure that a recovery won’t be possible because the public won’t have any faith in the capital markets that are supposed to be about capital formation, investment opportunity and risk transfer."

http://etfdailynews.com/2012/10/19/unless-we-act-high-frequency-trading-will-crash-the-stock-markets-indexsp-inx

The warning shot was the flash crash of May 2010. And why isn't that widely understood?

"The Flash Crash in May 2010 was caused by HFT running amok. The SEC won’t admit it because it’s too scary for the public to know they aided and abetted HFT, and now can’t control it."

[DailyBail]

Agree completely. It's coming.