Wall Street's October Massacre

A week's 235-point loss stuns the market

"It's extremely emotional. People are dumping stocks with reckless abandon. As trite as it may sound, the market is going down because it's going down."

-- Newton Zinder, analyst for E.F. Hutton

The process is called a "correction," which makes it sound like a painless, orderly affair. But last week's bloodbath on Wall Street was more aptly dubbed an "October massacre." Turmoil and outright fear shook the financial markets as stampeding hordes of investors got caught up in a mood that had been almost absent during the go-go 1980s: bearishness. Over the course of less than two months, in the worst...

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