While this present global recession seemed to strike quickly, the 1987 crash was notable for the break-neck speed at which the markets went into freefall.
This picture was published in the October 21, 1987, edition of the New Zealand Herald. Photographer Nigel Marple captured the pandemonium on the trading floor
of the Auckland Stock Exchange on Queen St. The New Zealand stock market slumped 60 per cent - putting many off the share market for life.
Philip Solarz, pictured, was then a callow 21-year-old. The rise and rise of the stock market bubble had seen the number of workers on the trading floor triple in the three years leading up to the crash. "You don't get that sort of growth without bringing in a lot of new people," he says.
He usually manned two phones, but not at the same time. "I was the junior guy, I was number three on my team. One phone went back to the office - we didn't have live electronic quotes in those days - and it was my job to tell the guys back there on speakerphone what was happening."
The other phone linked to the Wellington stock market, but Solarz says there was a running gag that perhaps he was calling someone else from work: "The joke was always - I've got the girlfriend on one phone, and my mother on the other."
But - joking aside - that Tuesday has stayed with Solarz, and not just because this photo saw him labelled the poster boy of the 1987 crash: "I remember looking around, and the public gallery was jam-packed. I was thinking 'all these people had lost all this money'."
And, once swiped by a bear, brokers learn lessons.
Solarz, now 43 and employed as a trader in Hong Kong, says working through Black Tuesday proved professionally advantageous during the past year.
"That experience actually helped me a lot in terms of seeing subsequent crashes as they happened or were setting up. You can more easily spot the madness of crowds and the mania of the markets."
matt.nippert@hos.co.nz
