The date of Monday October 19, 1987, which saw a worldwide crash of stock markets when market indexes dropped by huge proportions in a very short time; it was the largest one-day percentage loss in the history of financial markets.

In the weekend preceding this day, many investors were worried over their stock investments and started to feel something bad was about to happen. Then on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plummeted 508 points, shedding 22.6% of its total value. The S&P 500 dropped 20.4%, falling from 282.7 to 225.06. This crash marked the end of a five-year ‘bull’ market that had seen the Dow rise from 776 points in August 1982 to a high of 2,722.42 points in August 1987.

However, and unlike what happened in the Great Depression 1929, the market restored its strength immediately after the crash, posting a record one-day gain of 102.27 the very next day and 186.64 points on Thursday October 22. It took only two years for the Dow to recover completely; by September of 1989, the market had regained all of the value it had shed in the ’87 crash. Analysts blamed for the crash a bunch of factors among which are computer trading and derivative securities, illiquidity, trade and budget deficits, and overvaluation.