Friday, October 19, 2012

ROWLF EXPLAINS MARGIN CALLS:  Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the stock market's Black Monday, best known to our generation because it prompted the Nightline producers to book the Muppets to explain what the hell was happening.

2 comments:

  1. My mom was working as a broker then. And since she was a rookie, she was at the top of the call-in list that day. Meaning if people called in that didn't have a specific broker or didn't have an account, they got routed to Mom. Also, if their broker couldn't take their call, they had the option to talk to Mom instead.

    The story she told us later that I still remember - she was on the phone with one client - he was calling from an airport (on a pay phone, of course) because the TVs in the airport were showing the news. Mom looked up his account for him and gave him the bad news and she heard the phone drop and then heard only the sounds of the hustle and bustle of the airport. She never knew if he had a heart attack or went to the bathroom to throw up or just walked away in shock, too disturbed to hang up the phone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Should we make two stacks?

    ReplyDelete