Players Replay The Crash

Chances are you remember where you were and what you were doing the day the stock market crashed on Oct. 19, 1987. It’s one of those special days in history when time seemed to stop. The Dow Industrials 508-point plunge seemed like the end of the party back then, but if wasn’t long before the market rally was back in gear and the irrational exuberance of the go-go 90s arrived.

So twenty years and some 12,000 points later, we talked to people from Wall Street to Washington to put things in perspective.

Edward J. Markey

Markey is one of the longest serving members in Congress, having first been elected to the House of Representatives in 1976.  At the time of the crash, he was chairman of the House subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, which had significant oversight over securities regulation and the finance industry. (The subcommittee’s responsibilities were later split into two seperate panels.)

He is currently Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and a senior member of three other committees, including Energy and Commerce.

Where were you the day of the crash?

I was on the Hill and obviously I had been monitoring this very closely with intense focus over the previous two weeks. I was getting increasiningly concerned. I had sent a letter to the SEC chairman and asked for a study of 91-point decline on Oct. 6....On Oct. 15. I  sent another letter about the big decline the day before. (Click here to read the original letters.)

(What had happened in the runup to it. On July 23, I held a hearing on program trading. The chairmen of the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Commodies Futures Trading Commission,  the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Chicago Board of Trade, The New Yorjk Stock Exchange all testifed. They each said it was not a problem and there was no reason to worry.)

What actions did you take?

I flew up to New York and went to the NYSE. Someone told me to check what was going on in the QT (questionable trade)  room. The NYSE was reluctant to let me see it, but I was in the midst of an investigation. Dick Grasso took me down to look at the QT room and in this room were all these traders who were fighting over the questionable trades. All this paper was on the floor, obviously a chaotic condition. It took me three years to finish the investigation. On Oct 16, 1990, President Bush signed legislation for proper oversight and coordination of program trading.

So what caused the crash?

Program trading was the principal cause. There was an obviously a problem in the coordination with the CFTC and SEC. The SEC didn’t have proper emergency authority, there wasn't proper clearing and settlement.

Can it happen again?

I think we gave the SEC the authority it needed in order to put in place the proper safeguard, to allow cooperative working agreements, to reduce significantly the likeliehood of a repetition of that kind of event. What happened back then to a certain extent was a technical problem, a serious technical deficiency.

What's different today about communication?

I think it is a lot more sophisticated today than it was then.

What about investing?

You look at the dotcom bust, the subprime stuff, human nature stays the same. It doesn’t change.

John C. Bogle

Bogle founded The Vanguard Group in 1974 and served as Chairman and CEO until 1996. In 1975, he created the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, the first index mutual fund. Bogle is the author of five books. He was born six months before the stock market crash of 1929. He is currently President of Vanguard's Bogle Financial Markets Research Center.

Where were you that day?

"I was in the office all morning then I went to a meeting out of the office. It was Bryn Mawr Hospital. The next day there was one news report that I was so shocked by what had happened I was taken to the hospital.

The next morning. I got everyone into the office at 6am. Every one had been trained to handle the call volume. It was one of the most exciting days of my life.

I spoke to shareholders on the phone all day. I took 105 calls that day.  I can hear those calls. I remember writing notes to the crew, saying “We’re doing fine. Just keep your cool.’”

We did not get a wave of liquidations. There was not one sign of panic We told clients to stay put. When I went home that evening late, I thought this was over. There’s no measurable panic.

What happened the day of the crash?

“We really just don’t know. What we had was a cascading wave. The stock market had gotten to a greed phase. The signs were kind of ominous. We went from greed to fear with very little hope in between in one day.

Analysis later on found that the biggest factor was the mutual funds always selling as a stock went down -- it was known as portfolio insurance. That proved to be the villain of the piece.

Can it happen again?

Of course it could happen again. As I said long before the event, in 1986, 'Don’t be surprised if the market loses 100 points The lesson of all this is that in the stock market anything can happen

What's different about investors, investing and the markets today?

It’s always the same animal but with a different disposition. I look at the market being a little bit more friendly then. We’ve moved from investment to speculation. The stock market is a giant distraction. Why get all exercised about it if you’re a long-term investor?

Robert Shiller

Shiller is an author, economist and professor. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  His 2000 book Irrational Exuberance, which warned the stock market was in a bubble-bust mode, was a bestseller. Shiller is assocaited with the school of behavaioral finance. He surveyed investors and traders after the 1987 crash, the results of which essentially concluded that investment decisions are emotional not rational. He currently serves as the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at Yale and a  Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management.

Source: Michael Marsland, Yale University, Office of Public Affairs.

Where were you the day of the crash?

I was giving a lecture on finance and a student had a transistor radio and he said,  ‘Do you know what’s happening?’ and I said ‘No.” After class I walked down to Merrill Lynch in New Haven. I decided I wanted to study the event.”

Twenty years later what do you think happened?

In some ways my survey discovered the obvious—the market was too high. although the P/E ratio wasn't as high as it was in 2000, it was perceived to be high. On the way to it, there was a succession of record drops that got people increasingly fearful.

So was it simply fear and panic?

I didn’t use those words in words. They came up pretty frequently, though. I asked if the crash was caused by psychology or fundamentals. When I asked them to write something they said the market was over-priced.

Can it happen again?

It is possible we’re coming up a very bad period. Volatility is picking up.

Robert Hormats

Hormats joined Goldman in 1982 after more than a decade in the federal government, where he held senior positions at the State Dept., National Security Council and  Office of the US Trade Representative. He was working in the firm's investment banking at the time of the crash. He is currently a managing director and vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International. His most recent book is “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars”.

What was your first reaction?

I was stunned. It was almost surreal. It was so rapid. It hit you all at once. I equate to a category five hurricane. We didn’t have these Bloomberg computers on our desks as do do now and we had to go out and watch TV and other things.

I remember I was on Peter Jennings show that day or the next with Chuck Schwab. I said it’s not the Great Depression. 

No one at the time thought there wouldn’t be a lasting impact. The prism people were looking through was the crash of ‘29. It was a serious collapse of the wealth effect -- not so much that of the economy. It wasn’t like the current thing. It wasn’t an over-leveraged economy.

What's different today?

First of all, there are many more participants in the system -- emerging economies, for instance -- and in ones sense there is more liquidity and growth and that has helped to reduce the severity of a crisis. They can they can come in and buy assets that others might not.

Secondly, there are more players, more types of products, more diversification of asset holdings. That’s generally a good thing in that it apportions risk more broadly. On the other hand, there’s less transparency; who owns these kinds of assets and what’s in them so when markets become very volatile you don’t know which ones of them are able to withstand the volatility.

Are expectations about the Fed's role different? If so, how?

Totally. That’s a plus and a minus. It’s a plus that the Fed is needed to respond to these crises in a robust way. The negative is that may make people a little bit more complacent.  The Fed has a difficult job in that it has to protect the economy and system and and in doing so winds up easing some of the pain of people who took risks.

CONTINUED

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