A few years ago I wrote up my recollections of the Crash of 1987 – that very spooky period back when I was a mere pup in this business. Evidently some folks enjoyed the piece, since it cropped up here and there on the internet as it was shared by one person and another.

So I thought I would take a moment to reflect on my own Crash Experience – and perhaps some of you will share your October 19, 1987 story (provided you’re not a whippersnapper who would be relating what was on freakin’ Sesame Street that day! I really hate you guys. You’re svelte and unwrinkled and smart and energetic and I’m just liable to whup you if you’re not careful.) Maybe we’ll even get a recounting of the aforementioned dinner tale from last week. So if you feel like it, drop me a note with your recollections. If I get enough to make it worthwhile, perhaps I’ll compile them for sharing.)

I was 29 years old, 4 years in the business, with two young children. I thought I had investing figured out, didn’t really, and was working for the old Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley.) The market had been mostly good during my relatively brief time in the business, and I had survived the crucial new-guy starvation years and had built up a fairly good book of business.

“You need a new house” he said. “That “piece of#%@ little house of yours isn’t enough. You need to aim higher. Think bigger.” Actually a new house seemed like a pretty good idea, and the kids were getting bigger, and business was good, and hey…what’s a little extra mortgage to a hot-shot like me?I pasted a picture of a big house on the door of my little office (thanks to the suggestion of my motivational coach in the big office) and embarked on the quest to get me some o’ that. Before too long I was closing on a house that was twice the size of the old one and came complete with a mortgage that was only 3 times as large. Coolio!

Oh sure, the market had been a little funky. After peaking in the summer, the market had gone through a pretty good decline – from about 2700 to 2300 or so. In percentage terms, not an insignificant sell-off. But of course it was just: summertime doldrums, a little readjustment, things a little ahead of themselves, no problem, secular bull market, great buying opportunity, hey just look — now we’re getting a second chance at bargain prices.

And don’t forget: “We’re paying those guys in New York a lot of money.”

On Friday October 16, three of us brokers decided to play hooky and “have meetings scheduled” that afternoon. It was one gorgeous fall day. (By the way, for those of you in other locales – particularly you concrete jungle folks – I heartily recommend my neck of the woods in mid-October. The lower Shenandoah Valley of Virginia – smack in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains – is a great place to be when the air turns crisp and the trees put on their autumn show. Drop in sometime. I’ll buy you a beer.)

The weekend was a little tense, since we knew that Monday would open weak. An understatement as it turned out. The combination of a Treasury Secretary with a big mouth and what was called “portfolio insurance” (which somehow involved the commandeering of the free market system by that crazed computer from “2001 – A Space Odyssey” ) came together in an incredibly imperfect storm.

At some point during the day a strange, battlefield-giddiness sort of took over and we just…all….laughed. It was so surreal that all you could do was just laugh. Mortar shell…giggle…another bomb…chuckle. As the day went on, clients were trying to make moves – a lot of panic selling of course, along with more buying interest than you might imagine. There was one small problem though – the systems just crashed. Market orders, limit orders, stop orders – all in, but no reports.

“Are we filled?”

As it turned out it was days later in some cases – and a nonsensical mix of nothing dones, good trades, and fills that were two points or five points away from where you figured they should be. As the day went on and we approached down 500 we were really trying to do some buying. But there was no way to know what, when, if, and at what price trades were filling.

On Monday night, the manager made an evening shift mandatory.

“Call your clients. Tell them what’s going on and what to do.”

” Uhhh….what is going on and what should they do?”

His other fabulous idea was to call lots of people that weren’t clients of the firm and act like we had told everybody to get out before the crash, and then talk them into transferring their accounts. Oh he was prince of a guy all right. I hope he and Serge and the llamas are happy.

In the days after the October 19 crash things did stabilize a bit – even rallying some. Corporations stepped in with real buybacks (not the maybe-someday ones we see so often now.) The Fed flooded the system with liquidity and somebody unplugged the hell-spawned computers. The trading systems got back to working and we commenced to explaining why market orders (and limits, and stops) never filled – and more importantly we had the opportunity in the cooler non-panic moments to actually make recommendations and help people figure out how to proceed.

And what most people forget is that the market made its low, not on October 19, but a couple of months later in December. It’s always simple looking backwards, but tougher at the time (as it was in the 1989 United Airlines-related mini-crash, the Persian Gulf war, the 1994 baby bear, the Long-Term Capital mess, the Russian crisis, post-9/11, etc. Or today for that matter.

At the risk of being called a Pollyanna or a head-in-the-sand type, here’s an interesting little exercise. (And you folks know me, and you know my reasonably cautious market stance at present. I have a long bias and am fairly constructive on the market, but my present “play some defense” mode is well documented. And I’m old and feeble and decrepit, so I’m not a reckless sort anymore.)

So I thought I would take a moment to reflect on my own Crash Experience – and perhaps some of you will share your October 19, 1987 story (provided you’re not a whippersnapper who would be relating what was on freakin’ Sesame Street that day! I really hate you guys. You’re svelte and unwrinkled and smart and energetic and I’m just liable to whup you if you’re not careful.) Maybe we’ll even get a recounting of the aforementioned dinner tale from last week. So if you feel like it, drop me a note with your recollections. If I get enough to make it worthwhile, perhaps I’ll compile them for sharing.)

I was 29 years old, 4 years in the business, with two young children. I thought I had investing figured out, didn’t really, and was working for the old Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley.) The market had been mostly good during my relatively brief time in the business, and I had survived the crucial new-guy starvation years and had built up a fairly good book of business.

“You need a new house” he said. “That “piece of#%@ little house of yours isn’t enough. You need to aim higher. Think bigger.” Actually a new house seemed like a pretty good idea, and the kids were getting bigger, and business was good, and hey…what’s a little extra mortgage to a hot-shot like me?I pasted a picture of a big house on the door of my little office (thanks to the suggestion of my motivational coach in the big office) and embarked on the quest to get me some o’ that. Before too long I was closing on a house that was twice the size of the old one and came complete with a mortgage that was only 3 times as large. Coolio!

Oh sure, the market had been a little funky. After peaking in the summer, the market had gone through a pretty good decline – from about 2700 to 2300 or so. In percentage terms, not an insignificant sell-off. But of course it was just: summertime doldrums, a little readjustment, things a little ahead of themselves, no problem, secular bull market, great buying opportunity, hey just look — now we’re getting a second chance at bargain prices.

And don’t forget: “We’re paying those guys in New York a lot of money.”

On Friday October 16, three of us brokers decided to play hooky and “have meetings scheduled” that afternoon. It was one gorgeous fall day. (By the way, for those of you in other locales – particularly you concrete jungle folks – I heartily recommend my neck of the woods in mid-October. The lower Shenandoah Valley of Virginia – smack in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains – is a great place to be when the air turns crisp and the trees put on their autumn show. Drop in sometime. I’ll buy you a beer.)

The weekend was a little tense, since we knew that Monday would open weak. An understatement as it turned out. The combination of a Treasury Secretary with a big mouth and what was called “portfolio insurance” (which somehow involved the commandeering of the free market system by that crazed computer from “2001 – A Space Odyssey” ) came together in an incredibly imperfect storm.

At some point during the day a strange, battlefield-giddiness sort of took over and we just…all….laughed. It was so surreal that all you could do was just laugh. Mortar shell…giggle…another bomb…chuckle. As the day went on, clients were trying to make moves – a lot of panic selling of course, along with more buying interest than you might imagine. There was one small problem though – the systems just crashed. Market orders, limit orders, stop orders – all in, but no reports.

“Are we filled?”

As it turned out it was days later in some cases – and a nonsensical mix of nothing dones, good trades, and fills that were two points or five points away from where you figured they should be. As the day went on and we approached down 500 we were really trying to do some buying. But there was no way to know what, when, if, and at what price trades were filling.

On Monday night, the manager made an evening shift mandatory.

“Call your clients. Tell them what’s going on and what to do.”

” Uhhh….what is going on and what should they do?”

His other fabulous idea was to call lots of people that weren’t clients of the firm and act like we had told everybody to get out before the crash, and then talk them into transferring their accounts. Oh he was prince of a guy all right. I hope he and Serge and the llamas are happy.

In the days after the October 19 crash things did stabilize a bit – even rallying some. Corporations stepped in with real buybacks (not the maybe-someday ones we see so often now.) The Fed flooded the system with liquidity and somebody unplugged the hell-spawned computers. The trading systems got back to working and we commenced to explaining why market orders (and limits, and stops) never filled – and more importantly we had the opportunity in the cooler non-panic moments to actually make recommendations and help people figure out how to proceed.

And what most people forget is that the market made its low, not on October 19, but a couple of months later in December. It’s always simple looking backwards, but tougher at the time (as it was in the 1989 United Airlines-related mini-crash, the Persian Gulf war, the 1994 baby bear, the Long-Term Capital mess, the Russian crisis, post-9/11, etc. Or today for that matter.

At the risk of being called a Pollyanna or a head-in-the-sand type, here’s an interesting little exercise. (And you folks know me, and you know my reasonably cautious market stance at present. I have a long bias and am fairly constructive on the market, but my present “play some defense” mode is well documented. And I’m old and feeble and decrepit, so I’m not a reckless sort anymore.)