It was like the Wild West out there. I retreated to the sidelines rather than endure that kind of punishment. One hour into the market, about half of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks still couldn't be opened. Every time we got some new indication, more sellers would come in. At one time I calculated that if the market were to open with the lower end of the range of each indication, the Dow might be down another 400 points.
People forget how important technical levels can be.
If those indications were to become reality, we would take out whatever support existed technically for the market to hold above the 1000 level. We would erase the whole bull move that had started five years earlier. Right about this time, when the center looked like it would not hold, an amazing rally began to occur in the XMI index that mirrored the Dow Jones Average. Even though most of the Dow components were looking much much lower, the trading in the XMI indicated that the Dow stocks should be roaring. No matter which broker I checked in with, I got the same answer.