The Wall Street Journal warned naive investors:
"Many are looking for technical corrective reactions from
time to time, but do not expect these to disturb the upward
trend for any prolonged period."
The market plummeted another 11.7 percent the next day
- though trading ended with an impressive rally from the
lows. October 31 was a good day with a "vigorous,
buoyant rally from bell to bell". Even Rockefeller joined
the myriad buyers. Shares soared. It seemed that the worst
was over.
The New York Times was optimistic:
"It is thought that stocks will become stabilized at their
actual worth levels, some higher and some lower than the
present ones, and that the selling prices will be guided in
the immediate future by the worth of each particular
security, based on its dividend record, earnings ability and
prospects. Little is heard in Wall Street these days about
'putting stocks up.'"
But it was not long before irate customers began blaming
their stupendous losses on advice they received from their
brokers. Alec Wilder, a songwriter in New York in 1929,
interviewed by Stud Terkel in "Hard Times" four decades
later, described this typical exchange with his money
manager:
"I knew something was terribly wrong because I heard
bellboys, everybody, talking about the stock market.
About six weeks before the Wall Street Crash, I persuaded
my mother in Rochester to let me talk to our family
adviser. I wanted to sell stock which had been left me by
my father. He got very sentimental: 'Oh your father
wouldn't have liked you to do that.' He was so persuasive,
I said O.K. I could have sold it for $160,000. Four years
later, I sold it for $4,000".
Exhausted and numb from days of hectic trading and back
office operations, the brokerage houses pressured the
stock exchange to declare a two day trading holiday.
Exchanges around North America followed suit.
At first, the Fed refused to reduce the discount rate.
"(There) was no change in financial conditions which the
board thought called for its action." - though it did inject
liquidity into the money market by purchasing
government bonds. Then, it partially succumbed and
reduced the New York discount rate, which, curiously,
was 1 percent above the other Fed districts - by 1 percent.
This was too little and too late. The market never
recovered after November 1. Despite further reductions in
the discount rate to 4 percent, it shed a whopping 89
percent in nominal terms when it hit bottom three years
later.
Everyone was duped. The rich were impoverished
overnight. Small time margin traders - the forerunners of
today's day traders - lost their shirts and much else
besides. The New York Times:
"Yesterday's market crash was one which largely affected
rich men, institutions, investment trusts and others who
participate in the market on a broad and intelligent scale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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