The 2026 calendar matches 1987 exactly, but today’s market does not. Here’s why the latest technology selloff is no Black Monday–at least not yet.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 2026 calendar is identical to the 1987 calendar, placing October 19 on the same weekday as Black Monday. That coincidence makes for a compelling story, but it does not guarantee a repeat of history.
The 1987 crash followed several days of steep losses and culminated in a 22.6% one-day collapse in the Dow. Portfolio insurance amplified the selling, helping turn a decline into a historic rout.
Last week’s weakness was concentrated in technology and semiconductor stocks rather than spread evenly across the market. The Nasdaq fell 4.5%, while the Dow actually gained 0.7% for the week.
Treasury yields declined as stocks weakened, showing that investors still treated bonds as a safe haven. That is a meaningful contrast with 1987, when rising rates helped create the conditions for the crash.
Investors should examine concentration risk and prepare for volatility before it arrives. Q3 earnings will help determine whether the recent selloff reflects changing fundamentals or merely lower prices.
MY HOT TAKES
The Black Monday comparisons are emotionally irresistible but analytically lazy. A matching calendar is a curiosity, not an investment thesis.
The technology selloff looks more like a violent rotation than a wholesale rejection of risk. Investors should respect the damage without confusing it with systemic panic.
The semiconductor sector may be nursing a serious hangover, but it is recovering from an extraordinary party. An index that remains up close to 60% for the year is not behaving like an asset in a classic crash.
The bond market may be providing the most important signal of all. Falling yields during an equity selloff suggest the market’s shock absorbers are still functioning.
The real danger for investors is not recognizing a famous date; it is discovering too late that a supposedly diversified portfolio is dominated by one theme. Preparation and self-awareness matter more than anniversary-driven predictions.
You can quote me: “Still, a bond market that rallies when stocks stumble is a very different animal from one that revolts.”
Great Scott! I discovered something this weekend that made the hair on my arms stand up–and no, it wasn’t the crash chatter on social media. The 2026 calendar is IDENTICAL to the 1987 calendar. Every month, every date, every day of the week. You could actually hang a 1987 wall calendar in your kitchen today and never miss a single appointment. Once I read it, I fell into an obsessive mental rut placing myself–younger Marko–back in 1987. What would I have been doing this Saturday, this Sunday–last Friday? Last Friday, October 16th, fell exactly where it did in 1987–the day the Dow dropped 4.6% and everybody went home for a very long weekend. And today–Monday, October 19th–sits precisely where Black Monday did. Cue Doc Brown. Not Doc Martens (I had a pair of HIS boots back then), not Dr. Brown (I drank plenty of HIS Cel-Ray and Black Cherry soda back then)--but Doc Brown, the mad scientist from the 1985 classic Back to the Future. I half expected a DeLorean to come screeching up Broadway at 88 miles per hour. Most of my followers probably watched the movie in a theater back then–or maybe rented the VHS tape at some point–I did both, and I DID rewind the tape–I promise. 🤣 For those of you who were not even alive or too young, you have certainly seen references to this iconic, fun movie. If not–well, Google it. 😉 Are you with me now? Good. Ok, so here’s the thing about every time-travel movie ever made–the whole plot hinges on the idea that the same date does NOT have to produce the same ending.
My phone, of course, spent the weekend trying very hard to convince me otherwise. “Black Monday” was trending, complete with grainy 1987 charts, dire predictions, and more exclamation points than a teenager’s group chat. The anniversary does this every year, like clockwork. This year, though, the doomsayers had a prop: a nasty week for technology stocks. So, before anyone fires up the flux capacitor, let’s do what Doc would do. Let’s check the instruments.
Let’s go back in time. [cue the Huey Lewis hit song from the movie] The 1987 crash didn’t come out of a clear blue sky. On Wednesday, October 14th, an unexpectedly ugly trade deficit report pushed interest rates up and the dollar down, and the Dow fell 3.8%. It fell another 2.4% on Thursday. On Friday–our Friday, the 16th–it dropped another 4.6%, and by then the index was already deep into correction territory (remember, that’s a decline of 10% or more from a peak). Then came Monday. The sell orders were so heavy at the open that 11 of the 30 Dow stocks couldn’t even begin trading on time. By the closing bell, the Dow had lost 508 points–22.6%–in a single session, on a then-record 604 million shares at the New York Stock Exchange. It remains the largest one-day percentage drop in the index’s history.
That’s twenty-two point six percent–in case you missed it. Now, let that marinate for a moment. Applied to this last Friday’s close, that would be roughly 11,750 Dow points–in ONE day. The accelerant back then was something called portfolio insurance (a computerized strategy that automatically sold stock index futures as the market fell, supposedly to protect a portfolio from further losses). The problem? When everybody buys the same insurance policy, everybody files the claim at the same time. Selling begat selling. The machines didn’t light the fire, but they certainly fanned the flames. What rose from the ashes were circuit breakers–the trading halts that kick in when stocks fall too far, too fast–and we still have them today (yeah, I just got that chill thinking of March of 2020, as well 😰).
There’s a second part of the 1987 story that rarely makes the anniversary charts. The Dow clawed back its Black Monday losses in roughly fifteen months, and it was back to its pre-crash levels in about two years. The investors who hurt themselves the most were the ones who sold into the panic–who locked in a paper loss at the worst possible moment and then watched the recovery from the sidelines. The ones who simply held on, painful as it was, got their money back. I’m not suggesting that every crash ends that kindly–history is not a promise. But it is worth remembering that the most famous day in market history is also one of the most famous recoveries.
Now let’s look at our version of that week. Last week the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5%, its worst week since June. The S&P 500 dropped 1.9%. Ugly? Sure. But here is the number the crash-callers conveniently left off their charts: the Dow Jones Industrial Average ROSE 0.7% for the week–its second straight weekly gain. And on Friday–our Friday, the 16th–the Dow slipped just 0.3%. In 1987, that very same Friday took 4.6% off the Dow. Same date…er, same DAY of the week. Wildly different story.
What happened last week wasn’t a stampede for the exits. It was a stampede between the rooms–money moving out of one corner of the market and into others. The corner that took the beating was semiconductors. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell for eight straight sessions, matching its longest losing streak since the 2008 financial crisis and erasing roughly $2 trillion of market value along the way. That is real pain, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But here is the context the scary charts left out: even after all that, the index is still up close to 60% this year. Take a breath and read it slowly: SIXTY PERCENT! That is not a crash. That is a hangover after a VERY long party (something I also learned a lot about in the 1980s). 🤣 To be fair, the rotation wasn’t a clean one–smaller companies didn’t escape either, and the Russell 2000 gave back 3% on the week. Rotations are rarely tidy. They are messy, loud, and confusing while they are happening, and they only look obvious in the rearview mirror.
And here is the difference that matters most to me. In 1987, rising interest rates were part of the kindling–that trade deficit report on the 14th pushed yields higher right before the collapse. Last week, the opposite happened. The 10-year Treasury yield–the benchmark rate that sets the tone for mortgages, car loans, and the value of nearly every stock–fell from 5.24% to 5.09% over the course of the week–even as one inflation report after another ran hot. When stocks wobbled, money ran INTO bonds, exactly the way it is supposed to. The shock absorbers worked.
Now, I don’t want to oversell that. Yields are still hovering near their highest levels in more than two decades–the 10-year closed at 5.31% just two weeks ago. Consumer prices rose 3.7% in September from a year earlier. And the Fed meets on October 27th and 28th with plenty on its plate. Last week’s bond rally was as much a flight to safety as it was a vote of confidence. Still, a bond market that rallies when stocks stumble is a very different animal from one that revolts.
So, what does all of this mean for investors? Under the hood, last week was a lesson in concentration. The S&P 500 is weighted by size, which means a handful of giant technology companies carry an outsized share of the index. When they sneeze, the index catches a cold–even if the typical company in it is perfectly healthy. The Nasdaq told one story last week, while the Dow told another. Neither was lying. They were simply measuring different things.
I won’t tell you what to buy or sell, but I will share the questions I’m asking myself. Do I know how much of my “diversified” index fund is really a single bet on the same AI theme? If the leadership of the past few years hands the baton to other parts of the market, am I positioned to participate–or only to watch? And the big one: if I woke up to a genuinely bad day, would I have a plan, or would I be the one selling at the open? This week will provide plenty of fresh measurements. We are just now ramping up Q3 earnings season with Netflix reporting tomorrow, Tesla on Wednesday, and a long line of companies following right behind them. Earnings are the instruments that tell us whether last week was a correction in prices or a correction in fundamentals. Those are two very different things.
Is there anything that keeps me up at night? Of course–I wouldn’t be doing my job otherwise. Lenders are charging some of the most leveraged AI infrastructure borrowers nearly 15% on unsecured debt, as I wrote about last week. Oil has been flirting with $110 a barrel as tensions around the Strait of Hormuz flare yet again. And one more down day for chips would put that losing streak in rarefied air–the index has fallen nine days in a row only twice since the mid-1990s. Those are real risks. But they are risks to manage, not a crash to panic about.
Which brings me back to Hill Valley. Doc Brown spent three movies trying to get Marty McFly to understand one thing–the future isn’t written yet. In the sequel, Biff got his hands on a sports almanac with fifty years of results and turned it into a fortune. Every investor on the planet has wished for that almanac at least once. We don’t get one. What we get is a calendar–and today’s calendar happens to be a carbon copy of 1987’s. Same dates. Same days. But a calendar tells you WHEN. It doesn’t tell you WHAT. The market of 2026 has circuit breakers the market of 1987 never had, a bond market that rallied rather than revolted, and a selloff that rotated rather than stampeded. Same calendar. Different ending–at least so far, and I’ll be watching the instruments every step of the way.
As for that DeLorean? I looked out the window this morning. Nothing but a yellow cab doing 88 miles per hour down Broadway–which, in New York, is just a regular Monday. 😉 And if any of you happens to stumble across a sports almanac on the way to work today…please call.
FRIDAY’S MARKETS
Stocks fell on Friday as the selloff in chip stocks deepened, and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both posted their worst week since June. The S&P 500 fell 1.1%, the Nasdaq dropped 2.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 175 points, or 0.3%, to 52,002, and the Russell 2000 lost 1.7%. The 10-year Treasury yield edged down to 5.09%, ending the week 15 basis points lower. November WTI crude settled up 3.5% at $101.41 a barrel and December Brent rose 3.7% to $109.86, with WTI gaining about 10% on the week.
NEXT UP
NAHB Housing Market Index (September) may have slipped to 31 from 32.
Later this week: lots of earnings you don’t want to miss, as well as more housing numbers, Leading Economic Index, flash PMIs, and University of Michigan Sentiment. You better stay light on your feet and heavy on info–I can help you with the latter, the former is up to you. 😉