Limit Down

Written Nov 17-18, edited Dec 31

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James O'Heeney Walked down the Avenue of the Americas without glancing up from his phone. He was checking the mornings stock futures, a routine he repeated every day on his way to work. The man had a very sharp appearance. Freshly pressed clothes, a neatly trimmed haircut, and a cut, tightly shaven jaw. He wore a dark navy suit that squared out his tall shoulders. James checked the time on his Rolex Submariner, a gift from his wife for his 42nd birthday. 8:42. He was about 7 minutes from work with another 10 minutes or so to enjoy a cup of coffee and read the newspaper he kept tucked under his arm. Nice. He noted that the stock markets opened for trading in about 45 minutes. Futures were predicting some modest gains for the day. Something to look forward to.

James worked at a reasonably successful accounting firm as assistant director. He'd been there for 12 years and he fully expected to finish out his career in the small New York City office. It was a sizable business as far as it's clientele. While less than 100 people worked for the company, it had attracted an impressive customer base through the professional and effective reputation of it's employees. Keene and Fitzer Inc. was well known in the accounting world, a repertoire hard earned over decades of respectable performance. Being hired by the firm was considered a very high achievement and James couldn't help but feel proud as he walked through the lobby of the office building hosting the company and entered a waiting elevator. He nodded towards the building security guards as he passed them by.

As James stepped out onto his floor, one of his younger coworkers passed him onto the elevator. "Good morning James," he smiled, presumably on his way to grab a cup of Starbucks from downstairs.

"Good morning," James said politely before pushing through the large glass doors marked Keene and Fitzer in bold print. He waved to the woman manning the front desk, turned a corner and strode the final 20 feet to the corner office that had taken him 8 years to earn. Shutting the glass door behind him, the man set down his bag and his copy of the mornings Wall Street Journal on one of his spare chairs. He hung up his jacket on the hook beside the door before pouring himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot cooked up barely ten minutes earlier by his timed coffee maker. Taking a long sip, James checked his watch. 8:51. He reclined on his big desk chair, opening up the paper to the front page. The markets opened in 39 minutes.

Absentmindedly logging into his computer, the accountant read about the latest jobs report and PMI Index numbers. This occupied him until 9 o'clock at which point he sighed, set down his paper in the upper-left drawer of the desk and opened his company email account. First he would check for urgent memos or client emails. After about 5 minutes, once satisfied that no buildings were about to burn down on his watch, James liked to open up an Internet Explorer window to display the live stock market futures. The three major markets were still showing gains of .2-.5%, not a bad sign so early in the morning.

The next hour or so would be fairly uneventful. James answered emails, talked to a couple early bird clients over the phone, briefly talked to an intern about ordering extra reams of paper for the office printers... At 9:30 the stock markets opened so James switched his internet window over to the Dow Jones. Within 45 minutes it had jumped up over 175 points, just under 1%. When the intern left his office at 10:27, James checked again to see the Dow edging out 200 points. It wasn't long before the market was flirting with 1.5% gains for the day, putting James in a very cheerful mood. He hummed as he topped off his coffee cup.

At 11:48, after a phone call with the head of bookmaking and a little before heading out to lunch, James pulled up the tickers for all three stock markets. The NASDAQ was up 1.8%. The S&P 500 boasted a gain of 2.1%. But the Dow Jones was leading the charge at 2.3%, a 421 point gain on the day. James left for lunch with a grin on his face. He ate with some coworkers at a nice restaurant only a couple blocks out from the office. The group talked a little about a recent board meeting they had all attended before shifting to a celebrity that had been in the news lately. They were sharing a laugh about the popular actor when someone brought up politics. James handily steered the conversation away, gracefully switching topics to a recent football game. He wanted to keep things light, just for today.

It was 12:41 when James stepped back into his office and he still had almost 20 minutes of lunch break left. Perfect. This gave him just enough time to catch up on a few articles in the Wall Street Journal he had not yet gotten to. He sat back in his chair and read contentedly for about 15 minutes until he began to grow curious. How was the Dow Jones doing? Casually, he reached over to his mouse and clicked open his internet window.

James didn't recognize what he was looking at at first. He blinked and took a second look at the red number on his computer screen. -468 points. The Dow was down more than 2.5% on the day. Hurriedly, James opened tabs for the other two stock markets to see that they too were suffering similar losses. With shaking hands he stood up to pour himself a cup of water from the office water cooler. He stared at the ground in front of him as he walked down the hallway, ignoring the coworkers he passed along the way.

When he got back to his office all thoughts of working were gone. James immediately returned to the computer, sitting on the edge of his chair and clicking furiously through the internet. He audibly groaned when he saw that the Dow had slipped another 100 points or so in his absence. Every news site he opened up was flashing the news on their front page. No one had any kind of explanation for the sudden shift in direction. Shit. What the fuck was going on? James looked at the chart for the day, tracing the steps the market had taken while he had been enjoying his lunch.

The Dow Jones had peaked at about 510 points around 12:08 before stepping off a cliff and nosediving straight down. The price indicator bounced at the previous closing number and for a few minutes it looked as if the market might recover some of its previous gains. The hope was short lived and the Dow soon dropped another 250 points in only 10 minutes of trading. From there it trailed off in a gradual decline, knocking out every line of resistance it met. By the time James had finished taking in the moves of the past hour the Dow Jones displayed -549 points. There was no sign of the markets even beginning to slow down. He decided it was about time to put in a call to his stock broker.

The rest of the day passed in an arduous countdown to market close. James answered phone calls, replied to a handful of emails... but mostly he sat back and watched the stock market drop like a stone. He watched as it hit -4% which quickly devolved into -5% and -5.5%. Once the Dow Jones passed the -7% mark around 2:30 things really started to pick up speed and in less than half an hour James was looking at a 10% decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. There was a lot of resistance at the -10% line, and the price hovered there for about 20 minutes. But then the sell-off was back on and the market didn't even pause for -15%.

By the time 4:00 rolled around and the markets finally closed, the Dow Jones had lost just over 21% of its previous value. The S&P 500 sat -19.2% while the NASDAQ was down 20.6%. James felt sick. How did this happen? He looked at his copy of the Wall Street Journal which lay cast aside on a spare chair. The whole front page was dedicated to how good the latest economic data was and how strong the economy as a whole was looking. It was supposed to be a new bull market. What the fuck was going on?