What Dennis Gartman Remembers Most From “Black Monday”

Excerpted from the latest Gartman Letter, and presented without commentary (but with some highlighting).
ON THIS HORRIBLE ANNIVERSARY AND WHAT WE REMEMBER MOST:
Everyone seems to be writing about what they remember about the Crash of ’87 and we remember it well… very… and breaking with our common use of the ‘royal we’ in our commentary and using the personal pronouns instead, from this point onward…what I remember is the sheer irrationality of the day in question; the utter and sheer panic by those who had in the past never panicked and the effect it had upon me.
On the Friday before the ‘Crash’ I was in Raleigh, North Carolina with close friends from my days at the CBOT of several years earlier: Brian O’Doherty, who played football for our beloved NC State University and who traded in the bond pit… and Carl Boraiko… one the best floor traders in T-notes, Bonds and the NOB spread I’ve had the privilege of knowing… and several others. We were there to go to the NC State v. lemson game on Saturday and were playing golf at the Duke University Golf Course on Friday when one of us noticed that the Dow was ‘Down a hundred!!’ that afternoon as we checked our phone pagers that were suddenly paging us all, for there were not Iphones then. The Dow had never been down 100 point before… ever! It was shocking, to say the very least. As a former floor trader and having been writing TGL for three years at the time, and having warned previously about the dangers of ‘portfolio insurance’ I was fearful… very… about what might happen on Monday’s opening as a result.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 19, 2017.