Thirty-six years have passed since the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced an unprecedented meltdown that ricocheted around the world, sowing chaos in global markets and earning the nickname “Black Monday.”
Oct. 19, 1987, remains the worst day in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stretching all the way back to the late 19th Century.
On that Monday, the Dow
DJIA
plunged 508 points, a decline of almost 23%, in a daylong selling frenzy that tested the limits of the global financial system.
See: Wall Street warns of ‘Black Monday’ repeat just in time for 36th anniversary
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The chaos pushed stock exchanges to adopt stricter safeguards in the form of circuit breakers that halt trading if stocks or major indexes become too volatile, which is perhaps one reason why there hasn’t been a repeat since.
But what were some of the other bleakest days in the history of the Dow? In a recent chart shared on social media, Carson Group’s Ryan Detrick published a ranking of the worst days in the history of the blue-chip index.
Notice how several occurred not so long ago, in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading across the world.
It’s the only month in nearly a century that has two entries on Detrick’s list. Before that, October 1929, which saw back-to-back historic losses on Oct. 28 and Oct. 29, was the only such month. Those two days have gone down in history as well, with the former known as the original “Black Monday,” and the latter known as “Black Tuesday.” They ushered in start of the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression that began shortly thereafter.
Dow performance figures before 1929 get a little more fuzzy. Detrick’s table shows Dec. 14, 1914 as the only day to rival the historic losses from 1987. But as the New York Times explained in an article published on Oct. 26, 1987, recalibrations of performance figures and other factors — the New York Stock Exchange had only just reopened on Dec. 12 following a four-month closure inspired by the start of World War I — have sometimes distorted market data from around this period.
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