Friday, October 19, 2007

Happy Anniversary

20 years ago today was Black Monday. October 19, 1987. People lost a LOT of money. In some cases their life savings.

The TSX has been open for 45 minutes as at this writing. It's down 135 points. Seems like history can repeat itself. Hopefully it doesn't.

Seems like people lost some money today too... as the index fell 2.3%, certainly no Black Friday, but a dark day none the less.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

it's options expiry day don't forget,that can create down days like this.

I see Victoria's inflation rate doubled in one month,I thought we were insulated ?

Anonymous said...

almost 2 hours and almost 260 points down

Anonymous said...

when it's 400 points I'd be concerned, 200's is pretty average these days.

Village said...

I think we are at a bit of an inflection point. Actually we have been for a month or so.

Option 1 - Financial markets buy the fed speak hook line and sinker and stocks continue the bull run. (Mostly I believe a function of devalued currency and less actual value in stocks.)

Option 2 - Market decides/realizes that they are the tail waging the dog. Mass exodus of risk and move towards safety.

In both cases, I still see commodities doing extremely well. Don't know what to make of oil though, I'd think it's due for a pull back. But then I thought that $20 ago. =)

Anonymous said...

the G7 meeting will be important to see if there is any sign of US dollar intervention, the chart looks ugly !

Agree on the commodities and all the metals, oil is getting to the point where the economy is being clearly effected and recession odds are going up daily.

David Bratzer said...

Hi, just wondering if you could talk about "the smith manoeuvre" as a form of investment / paying off the mortgage.....

Anonymous said...

There's definitely an air out there today that things are going to cool faster than any of the so called pros imagined even in Canada.

Catepillars earnings seemed to shake up the US market and more of the so called analysts seem to be changing their tune of "the consumer in Canada will carry us through any US recession".
They are seriously underestimating the psychology of Canadians,they can be very frugal when tougher times start happening.

Ryan said...

Canadian Capitalist has had a number of posts about the Smith manoeuvre, starting with a book review. You can find them all here.