URL for long Bloomberg piece / Crash of 1987 ( I hope this link works) ....................
bloomberg.com
Lots of good stuff in here.
I (Jon) am now 59 years old, and was working as a so-called "professional" on Wall Street at the time of the Crash of 1987.
( I was an options arbitrage trader at Cowen & Co. at their New York headquarters office.)
Although this will make me sound annoying, I cannot believe :
1. One of the people in this piece was incapable of remembering BP (British Petroleum) when he said : "In early October there was another IPO, which I think was a very large British company."
2. The same person also incorrectly identified the year of the Hunt Brother silver blow-up : "I remembered the Hunt brothers’ failure in 1981 and the problems ..."
It was actually in March 1980.
3. In the "Bloomberg Odd Lots" so-called "podcast" (at the very end, after the article), an incredibly important, influential guy apparently does not know the correct name for the CBOE.
He endlessly says : "Chicago Board of Options Exchange" when the correct name is : "Chicago Board Options Exchange"
4. Also, this Bloomberg piece confirms something that I once had to write in to the NYT in a reader comment, to explain to them that their reporter's whole "glowing" praise of some Wall Street firms' behavior during the Crash of 1987 was not true at all.
From this Bloomberg piece (now, in 2017)
<<<<< John Phelan, the CEO of the NYSE, came to the floor and said, “I’m getting calls from everybody, they want to close this place.” All the major firms had called him -- Merrill and Salomon and Goldman -- which put a lot more pressure on him. I said, “John, you can’t close this place. If you close it, you’ll lose control.” >>>>>
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From me (back in 2007)
(ironically, composed and sent around 1:45 AM, just like this Silicon Investor message !)
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Jon Koplik
November 4, 2007 · 1:46 am
What Floyd Norris said was 100% contradicted by what the WSJ said in their famous 11/20/87 piece (which discussed 10/20/87) :
“Behind the scenes, other pressures on Mr. Phelan to close the Big Board were multiplying. Several big securities firms “called the SEC and asked them to tell us to close,” says Mr. Phelan (only the U.S. president and a stock exchange — but not the SEC — can order a closing). Mr. Phelan won’t name the firms, but market sources say Salomon Brothers Inc. and Goldman, Sachs & Co., major firms with huge inventories of securities that were being rapidly devalued, were among those pushing to shut the exchange. A Goldman official says the firm did discuss the possibility of a temporary closing with SEC Chairman Ruder but didn’t recommend it. A Salomon spokesman didn’t return a phone call.”
Jon (full-time speculator in interest rate futures).
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That's all.
Jon.
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