Introduction

I am writing about one of the most severe days in the history of the stock market and one of 20^th century’s darkest days in business, Black Monday. On Monday 19^th October 1987, stock markets all around the world crashed with the American Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 508.32 points which was 22.6% at the time, which was its largest one day percentile change, and $500 billion was lost on this day. 

It was said to be the crash"that everyone expected but could not justify because of the work of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission”. This was the organisation President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced after the depression. 

Over the next few weeks I plan to explain how and why it happened and the intervention the Government and the Fed took to make sure it would never happen again.