OT.Anyone recall the 20%+ Wall St drop 25 years ago

agpilot

Member
It was refered to as Black Monday and the general market dropped over 20% on this day 25 years ago. Almost no one could connect to their Brokers let alone place any Market orders.. Yes I know this is not "directly" related to fixing farm equipment but there were a lot of Ag companies wondering if they would be forced to fold up back then on that day..
There has to be a market like Wall Street for the United States to function... ask the CEO of all the largest Ag conpanies.. John Deere, ADM, Cat etc.. I watched a few hours of the action on FNN cable that day and an average 20 percent change is a real wild ride. Some companies value was cut in half The wildest day I've seen and I started investing in stocks over 40 years ago..
I think the bigest Ag related companies have tried to take defensive action against a melt down like that.
So how many here on YTMag have invested in Ag companies??.. Likely not too many but Wall Street does play a big role in the Ag world Like it or not so in fact this is an AG related post more then many topics here.. Anyone been holding Stock in Ag companies?? ag
 

I believe that it was called black friday. Afriend was handling my investments at the time. He was writing puts and calls on my shares. (All that I had) Some one took their option to buy my share about three days before Black Friday. So I was liquid at the time. My friend had customers on big margins and lost his job at Dean Witter Reynolds because of it.
 
I remember it very well. It was a sunny day here but they where calling for heavy rains the next day. I had forty fat hogs ready for market that day. They where at 42-45 cents per pound and they wanted 230-250 pound fats. A very good neighbor came by the Saturday before. He had 50 acres of soybeans for me to cut. He was worried about the ground getting too wet after the rains. So he told me if I would come and run his beans on Monday Oct 19,1987 he would help me haul my fat hogs the next Monday. ( Monday was the only day the yards took fat hogs where I sold at that time)

So I did that for him. All day long on the radio the markets where falling like a rock. He was hauling his beans two ways. We had a semi that I was loading while he pulled loaded wagons to town. The semi delivered to Davenport. We we call the morning of Oct 19 the beans where fifty cents higher in Davenport than they where locally. So it would pay the 25 cents hauling and put some money in his pocket. We only could get the one semi. So he needed to haul 1000-1500 bushels to the local elevator.

The local beans where priced right as he dumped them. The beans that went to Davenport where priced at the close. Those beans brought less money at the close than the ones locally because the bean markets went limit down. So he lost money on the shipped beans.

I really got hammered. The hog market dropped like a rock. The fat price went down to 30-33 cents a pound. Plus they moved the target weight down too. They only wanted 220-230 pound hogs. Guess what mine weighed??? About 240 lbs. average. I got docked for them being over weight. Net after all the fees was 23 cents a pound.
So 40 x 240 x the twenty cents they would have brought = $1920 Or basically $50 per head less than they would have brought if we had hauled them the morning of Oct 19,1987. So Heck yes I remember that day.
 
I heard mention of it on the radio, I remember it tho I wouldn't have thought of it on my own.

The whole ag ecconomy is kinda set up right now for a similar adjustment, or drop, in valuation. Will be interesting.....

--->Paul
 
(quoted from post at 15:16:15 10/19/12) It was refered to as Black Monday and the general market dropped over 20% on this day 25 years ago. Almost no one could connect to their Brokers let alone place any Market orders.. Yes I know this is not "directly" related to fixing farm equipment but there were a lot of Ag companies wondering if they would be forced to fold up back then on that day..
There has to be a market like Wall Street for the United States to function... ask the CEO of all the largest Ag conpanies.. John Deere, ADM, Cat etc.. I watched a few hours of the action on FNN cable that day and an average 20 percent change is a real wild ride. Some companies value was cut in half The wildest day I've seen and I started investing in stocks over 40 years ago..
I think the bigest Ag related companies have tried to take defensive action against a melt down like that.


I had only been investing a few years, but I didn't react to the plunge, just rode it out, I ended up +20% for the year.
 
Oh I remember it well!

I had just started working a "real job" got promoted, then promoted again - and was investing like crazy.

The market was doing very well - I was on top of the world.

Then whammo.

The market dropped 20% in one day - but I dropped more like 50% - and wasn't much fun afterwards either.

That was the first good bath I took in the market - sadly not the last!
 
Well folks, if you read between the lines, the big boys are bracing for similar action. With the spike in the nat. debt/deficit, that money is going to (has to) show up one of these days and it won't be pretty. Read "Aftershock" by Robert Wiedemer? NYT best seller. A real eye opener.

I'm not in the market.

Mark
 
Yep. remember it well. It was a pelozi and reed and Obisma, comunist plot, designed to create a new world order....whatever that means. It must have been their fault...everything else is their fault.
 

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