Dead Cat Bounce?

After the worst week in the annals of Wall Street, the DOW roared back today with its best one-day surge in history.

So have the smart guys who got us into this mess figured out how to avoid global economic meltdown? Or is the DOW’s wild swing just a dead cat bounce?

During the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the market went through some wild swings.

After an amazing five-year run when the world saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increase in value fivefold, prices peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The market then fell sharply for a month, losing 17% of its value on the initial leg down. Prices then recovered more than half of the losses over the next week, only to turn back down immediately afterwards. The decline then accelerated into the so-called “Black Thursday”, October 24, 1929.

from Wiki

Now step into the way back machine to see what the smart guys were saying in 1929:

The Country is Fundamentally Sound; “Don’t Panic, Stocks are Safe!”

And now this from 1934 … “Regulation will destroy capitalism.”

BTW this guy ended up doing time at Sing Sing for embezzlement.

Thanks to Barry Riholtz at The Big Picture for digging up these Fox Movietone newsreels.

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