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Black Monday investment & finance definition

  1. October 29, 1929. Stock market volume was huge this day, with nearly 16.4 million shares of stock traded. Prices fell drastically: For example, General Electric was off 48 points, Westinghouse was off 34 points. The big bankers of the time, such as J.P. Morgan, refused to do anything to support prices. Instead, their concern was that the market remain orderly.
  2. October 19, 1987. On this date, the U.S. stock market lost nearly one-fourth of its value in a matter of hours. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22 percent, or 508 points, its biggest one-day point fall to date.

See Black Monday in Wall Street Words

A widely used reference to October 19, 1987, the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a record 508 points, or nearly 23%. Disarray in the financial markets resulted from a combination of trade deficits, budget deficits, and potential government regulation of mergers and issuance of junk bonds.

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