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Dow stuns small investors
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October 27, 1997: 5:57 p.m. ET
Historic drop and halt in trading put fear in people's hearts on Monday
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Rosana Adivinadora and about a dozen other people hovered around the monitors at Charles Schwab & Co. Monday, elbowing for room to check their investments after the U.S. stock market took a historic nosedive.
Their faces showed a mixture of shock and fascination after the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 554.26 points and triggered two halts in trading.
"I came in to look at my stock prices and I said, 'Oh my God, it's a crash,'" said Adivinadora, an astrologist from Queens. "This is a witchy, Halloween market."
From dishwashers to secretaries to traveling salesmen, small-time investors nationwide were scrambling on Monday to understand what to make of the skid.
It was an eerie reminder of another October day 10 years ago, when the Dow tumbled 508 points, or 22.6 percent.
After that bloodletting on Oct. 19, 1987, the New York Stock Exchange established "circuit-breaker" rules, whereby trading would halt when the Dow fell to certain levels. Until Monday, Wall Street had never met those benchmarks.
Harvey Wolfe, a salesman from New York, remembers 1987 all too well. He lost up to 75 percent of his investments. He admits he's feeling cagey today -- but he's diversified his portfolio in the past 10 years to protect his money. He's not sure how much he lost on Monday.
"I'm definitely nervous, because I was way ahead this year," Wolfe said. "I definitely lost some money today. But I'm trying to be as relaxed as possible."
"Elaine" and "Mike," a couple who didn't want their last name or hometown identified, said they lost about $2,000 Monday when they sold some technology stocks. She's a teacher's aide and he works in hospital food services.
"We are simple people, but the stock market is a gamble -- you can't get crazy about it," said "Elaine" after the couple checked some stock prices. "You have to take it in stride."
The drama in the U.S. stock markets exacerbated a common problem for small investors who can't get through to their brokers.
Rowena Itchon, a spokeswoman at T. Rowe Price, acknowledged heavy trading days can force investors to wait on hold on the phone. She said the brokerage put on 80 extra representatives to handle calls.
"We did see heavy phone volume," Itchon said."Towards the end of the day, people were buying more equities to take advantage of lower prices."
Luciano Siracusano, a salesman from the Bronx, wasn't surprised by Monday's hemorrhage. He's thought the stock market has been overvalued for a long time, and he's hedged his money by buying some put options.
Siracusano calls himself a stock market "junkie," and spends hours every day talking to people about what's happening on the Street. He thinks it was a mistake to halt trading because it's a sign the system doesn't work.
"People were standing there just staring at the [stock ticker] machines," Siracusano said. "They're mostly in shock … the market is a beast." 
-- By staff writer Martine Costello
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