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All the people in the photo didn't realize it at the time but that day of Friday April 14, 2000 was the day the stock market's tech bubble ended. To get an idea of how wild the move was, here's a news story from that day
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - U.S. stocks plummeted Friday, capping off five days of stunning losses that handed the Nasdaq composite index its worst weekly performance of all time and the Dow Jones industrial average its steepest one-session point loss in history.
The Dow tumbled more than 600 points, trouncing the previous record and triggering circuit breakers at the New York Stock Exchange. The sell-off gave the Nasdaq its biggest point loss of all time, topping the last No. 1 plunge set just five days ago. But the statistical standout could be this: the Nasdaq fell more than 25 percent this week, trouncing the 19 percent fall that began Oct. 21, 1987, Black Monday.
The Nasdaq composite index shed 355.61 points, or over 9 percent, to 3,321.17, its biggest one-day decline on record. At one point during the trading session, the Nasdaq was down 411 points. The index lost over 1,000 points this week and is now off more than 34 percent from its record high set March 10 - well beyond the 20 percent decline Wall Street sees as the beginning of a bear market.
I'm in the photo in the blue jacket in back on the phone which was in the midst of my 9 month order desk stint at Nomura before moving to start trading under a group of locals at the Merc. In front of me were the two guys on headsets doing Dow/S&P arb (7 Dow to 2 S&Ps I think it was then) and to my left in the black and red were the guys at Shatkin, behind Paine Webber in the green jacket. A lot of great and sometimes funny memories come back from finding this photo. The guy on my right headed the desk and he was a great, aggressive broker. What always cracked me up was when some institutional desk would call up and ask what's going on but if he didn't know, he'd feed them the biggest line of BS like "yeah First Chicago's index arb has been coming in buying dips while Goldman has been consistent sellers and locals are following their lead so the pit is short at the moment." Right after hanging up he'd flash a big grin my way and tell me that I should never tell them I don't know something and make up flows if so cause it's all BS anyways. LOL