BLACK MONDAY

(Business World) In the colloquial language of the stock-market, the day of the world stock-market crash which began in New York on Monday 19 October 1987 and resulted in great falls in the values of stocks and shares on all the world markets. Etymology: Any day of the week on which something awful happens can be given the epithet black; the name Black Monday had, in fact, already been used over the centuries for a number of Mondays, notably (since the fourteenth century) for Easter Monday. Black Tuesday was a term already in use on Wall Street to refer to Tuesday 29 October 1929, the worst day of the original Wall Street crash. History and Usage: Within days of the dramatic drop in share prices which started in New York and sent panic all over the world, the financial press was describing the event as Black Monday. The crash had important economic consequences in several countries, so Black Monday is likely to remain a meaningful financial nickname for some time. The Dow Jones, once up 712 points for the year, drops 508 points on Black Monday. Paper losses total $500 billion. Life Fall 1989, p. 28 Many institutions and individual investors have shied away from stock-index futures, blaming them for speeding the stock market crash on Black Monday two years ago. Wall Street Journal 17 Oct. 1989, section C, p. 29 See also meltdown