Time to banish all your Black Monday blues
AS this week marks the anniversary of Black Monday, the tempestuous stock market crash of 19 October 1987, The Capitalist took a metaphorical stroll down memory lane with some of those who rode out the storm.
It seems that for those who lived through what is often considered the worst stock market crash in living memory, it is time to look back not in anger, but with rose-tinted spectacles.
David B Smith, now a professor at the University of Derby but at the time a stockbroker for Williams de Broë, remembers Black Monday as: “A sudden, spectacular market phenomenon that came and went.”
Smith admits that: “People were panicking. If you were in the room there came a point where the deodorant went, and everyone started to sweat”.
However in hindsight he conceded that it was now: “Not a big deal even though it felt like it at the time”.
David Buik, strategist at Cantor Index, reminisced to The Capitalist a slightly more apocalyptic version of the day: “The fear element worried us all. It was terrifying.”
However Buik has another sombre reason to remember Black Monday – a near-decapitation in what became known as the Great Storm that swept through England a few days earlier – and closed markets on the Friday that preceded that fateful day.
“I was driving through Barnsbury and a piece of corrugated iron narrowly avoided slicing my head off,” said Buik.
■ It is not often that The Capitalist has the chance to compare a young group of traders to The Lady Gaga, but this is exactly the predicament The Capitalist found itself in at the Capital Club on Abchurch Lane. All were busy displaying their best poker faces at a Texas Hold’em tournament to raise money for children’s charity Futures for Kids.