That fateful day, in Oct 1987 when the market fell...

I still remember quite vividly, that fateful day in October 1987. That Black Monday, when the market opened, and the actions began...

I started with this small financial advisory firm in the fall of 1987. Business was thriving. The young guys were aggressive, and it specialized in pushing funds to wealthy clients. Back then, funds was still a new concept, but it was catching on. It was called "unit trust", with customers buying "units" in the trusts (funds). Performance charts of almost all funds (like the Thornton Tiger Fund) pointed only up, in steep curve. Life was good, and everyone was happy. I had this part time job there, Girl Friday kinda job, but I had alot of flexibility. The founder even taught me how to do programming (my first taste in software development), and it's fun.

Firms like this lived on commissions (from fund houses) selling funds. The process of buying/selling fund was still very manual. We got orders from customers, we faxed in the buy/sell orders, and we're advised of the price at the end of the day after the fund house received all the orders for the day and compiled the price, then we updated our database to compile the holdings' value of the clients. Usually there weren't that many orders to do, but the dollar amount of each is sizable.

That Monday, I went in. By 9am, phones started ringing off the hook. Clients heard the news, and everyone wanted to sell. I was oblivious, and didn't realize what went on at first. And then news came in, that the US market crashed, and Hong Kong was going to follow. All funds (no exception) came crashing from the sky. By 10am, all fax lines of all fund houses got busy tone. They probably pulled the plug, or the lines really were busy. In any case, we couldn't put in any more sell orders of the customers. We sent the messenger to bring the sell orders' paperworks to the fund houses individually. He came back shortly later, saying the receptionists (without exception) told him, they were not (or could not) accepting sell orders anymore. So the founder told everyone to stop picking up the phones.

That brutal day left many clients disillusioned. The trusts between the clients and the advisors were breached, since the guys couldn't sell the funds in time, when the clients had wanted them to. Out of the 3 young, aggressive guys, 2 of them (one came back from Australia and one from UK) plotted to start their own thing behind the back of the founder and were fired, leaving only the less aggressive guy (who graduated in Hong Kong) and the founder. The guy from UK was also fired due to the office romance he started with the secretary, and the founder didn't like fraternization. I could have stayed, but I don't see the point. There wasn't much to do. I went there to learn rather than for the meager hourly wages. The founder asked me to stay, but I left maybe in Nov/Dec.

In the end, the unit trust never quite recovered to the pre-crash level, till the day I left Hong Kong a few years later. Business dried up for that small advisory firm. Last I heard, it shuttered the operation.

PS: I left all the names out. There's no point putting the names in. I don't even remember their last names now anyways. I suppose someone out there could have piece together all the first names and the company name, and linked back to who these guys are. I don't want that. These are probably histories that the guys might want to bury. Let this be the last chapters in my own memoir, and leave it like that.