Is Black Monday Repeating?

On 19 October 1987 the Dow lost 22.6% in a single day. No day since has come within nine points of it, and it has carried one name ever since: Black Monday. The months before it look eerily similar to the ones we have just lived through: a new Federal Reserve chairman raising rates weeks into the job, a Dow that set its last record in August, American forces and Iran. This video takes what led to Black Monday in the order it happened and sets this October beside each part: the rate rise, the market before the crash, the selling that was waiting, the Monday itself, and the Tuesday, the day the President's own investigators said the financial system "approached breakdown". Chapters 0:00 The worst day in the Dow's history 0:32 Then and now: three parallels 1:22 What the investigators found 2:03 1. The new chairman 3:36 2. The market before the crash 5:56 3. The selling that was waiting 7:15 Borrowed money, then and now 8:51 4. The Monday, hour by hour 11:04 One household's money 11:39 Three investigations, three answers 13:30 The rule written afterwards 15:05 The five days it has been used 16:50 5. The Tuesday 19:36 What the Fed did 21:10 What nobody has seen 21:47 The verdict Sources Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 closes: S&P Dow Jones Indices via FRED; MeasuringWorth and Yahoo Finance for earlier years Report of the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms (the Brady report), January 1988 SEC Division of Market Regulation, The October 1987 Market Break, February 1988 Commodity Futures Trading Commission, final report and news release, January and February 1988 Mark Carlson, A Brief History of the 1987 Stock Market Crash, Federal Reserve staff paper 2007-13 Richard Roll, The International Crash of October 1987, 1988 General Accounting Office, Financial Markets: Preliminary Observations on the October 1987 Crash, 1988 Public Papers of the Presidents, 19 October 1987; Federal Reserve conference-call transcript and Record of Policy Actions, October and November 1987 Federal funds rate, discount rate, consumer prices: Federal Reserve and BLS via FRED Market-wide circuit breakers: NYSE Rule 7.12; CFTC Chair Born, testimony of 29 January 1998; the exchanges' working-group report on March 2020 Family stock holdings: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2025; household and market values: Federal Reserve, Financial Accounts (Z.1), 30 June 2026 401(k) balances: Fidelity, 30 June 2026; margin debt: FINRA, and for 1987 the New York Stock Exchange figure as reported by the Christian Science Monitor; leveraged funds: LSEG Lipper Ten-year Treasury yield and Brent crude oil: Federal Reserve and EIA via FRED Federal Reserve, Financial Stability Report, 8 May 2026; statement, press conference and minutes of the 16 September 2026 meeting The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times of autumn 1987 are quoted as cited in the Carlson paper. The line on Iran in 2026 rests on press reports. Photos (public domain) Kevin Warsh: Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan's swearing-in, 11 August 1987, and President Reagan with Alan Greenspan, Howard Baker and James Baker, 20 October 1987: White House Photographic Office, National Archives Kevin Warsh's swearing-in, 22 May 2026: The White House Our calculations: the dollar figures on a 22.6% fall, the three halt levels from the 9 October close, how far below a record each large fall began, the two-day 36%, the 1987 Dow set against this year's record, and margin debt as a share of GDP are ours from the sources above. The charts of each halt day are schematics (open, halt, close), and the 1987 clock lines are built from the time-stamped levels quoted in the Brady and SEC reports. Quotations appear as typeset text, not page captures. This video is for education only. It is not financial or investment advice. #stockmarket #blackmonday #economy