Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Reflection on the Crash

1. It was symmetric with the previous week where it opened limit up on the news. They had reached a compromise, and then it went limit down, indeed 100 down when they didn't reach an agreement. Amazing that the time horizon is so short. As soon as they voted the agreement down, it was clear that they'd come up with an agreement shortly. The stock market took care of that. "It's amazing how a 900 point drop in Dow can get their attention" with all the lobbyists involved, and the power increases, but yet the leverage of traders is so great that they automatically get exited from their positions on bad news even if it's going to be reversed the next day at the open.

2. This crash and the Oct 19, 1987 both were symmetric in that the Secretary of the Treasury caused it. In the first one, Jim Baker said, "The Europeans have to strengthen the currencies." In this case, there was revulsion against a political plan to feather the nest of both parties. The bonds in both cases had their biggest up moves in history, but in 1987 they stayed up for the next week, and in this case they reversed the next day. Commodities had one of their worst days in history showing that all markets are interrelated and when wealth goes down, all spending is reduced.

3. This crash brought all markets to many year lows, and was the final revulsion, the final throwing the frog into hot water that cleared the decks as the move the next day, one of biggest in history, showed. The discount rate is always ready to be lowered when the market goes down by more than 4% in a day as it did on Jan 21, and in Aug 2007.

4. The European markets were down a few percent more than the US at the open, as were Japan and Israel, foretelling what was going to happen.

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