Joe, in 1987, on Tuesday after black monday, something or someones stepped in, in the face of total panic, and started buying futures. To my knowledge, it has never been revealed who put up the bucks. But it snapped the mornings horrific sell-off and turned the market on a dime, winding up with a huge gain.
BTW, in 1987, the mantra was "portfolio insurance" - a computerized program that automatically sold percentages of long portfolios if they dropped by certain percentages. Great idea, until all the programs automatically kicked in at the same time, trying to sell the same stocks into a vacuum, dropping the averages and triggering the next sell points. Ah, Wall St. larry |
