This morning before heading over to Mass, I did my usual routine of walking our three golden retrievers followed by a quick check of my email, text messages, and what appointments I had lined up on my calendar for the day ahead. I literally stopped in my tracks when I saw that today was October 19th. It’s a day that always conjures up some powerful memories for me from 35 years ago as I was relatively new in my position as a financial analyst covering the U.S. auto and auto parts companies for Kidder Peabody, one of the truly great firms I ever had the privilege to work for. On that day, October 19, 1987, the U.S. stock market plunged 508 points or 22.6%, a loss that remains the largest one day stock market decline in history.
Suddenly in an instant, it seemed as if the world that I and many other financial professionals had grown up in had changed forever. Never before had we witnessed such extreme market volatility and the realization that financial markets had now become truly intertwined and technologically interconnected. I can still vividly recall conversations with my colleagues in the ensuing weeks and months and wondering when one of us would be let go and what we would then do for a living. I had only recently left what now seemed like the safer confines of economic consulting and I can still hear the many times I would say to myself “Jack, you should have stayed in consulting”. I was 32 years old back then with a 2-year old daughter and my wife Jean was pregnant with our second daughter whose due date just happened to be you guessed it, October 19th.
I look back on that difficult experience with a different lens now knowing that any career will be marked by periods of great challenge and uncertainty but where the opportunities for your personal growth and yes transformation seem boundless. For me, I was lucky to have some incredible mentors at Kidder Peabody like George Boyd our Head of Research, Teddy Johnson our Head of Institutional Sales, and such industry leading voices in their respective fields of expertise like Roy Burry (Beverage and Tobacco), Bob Hageman (Metals), Steve Albert (Homebuilders), and Arnie Snyder (Pharmaceuticals), men who always went that extra mile to calm me and others down, share their wisdom with us, and yes even coached us before we really appreciated the blessing that mentorship and coaching in the workplace can be in one’s professional development. I had research assistants like Steve Waldman, David Myers, and Darren Kimball, CFA who besides making your job easier because of their intellect and talent, would always take the time to let me blow off some steam for the extreme anxiety and sometimes the lack of confidence I was clearly experiencing. They may not have realized it at the time, but all of these wonderful people I had worked with were being truly empathetic and they helped validate what I was feeling.
As it turned out, we all learned a lot in that experience of Black Monday and it helped us get through some other incredibly volatile times like the mini crash of 1989, the recession in 1991-92, the Long-Term Capital Management debacle during the late summer of 1998, the bursting of the tech bubble in 2001-02, the Great Recession in 2008-09, and the Pandemic recession of 2020. So for those of you who might be experiencing your first super scary economic and stock market environment, my heartfelt advice is to reach out and talk to your Managers, your peers, and your mentors. Lean into them for the wisdom and experience they can share with you. I know you absolutely will get through this challenging period and when you do, remember to pay it forward by helping someone else just like my former colleagues George, Teddy, Roy, Bob, Steve, and Arnie at Kidder Peabody did for me 35 years ago.
Wishing my clients, fellow coaches, colleagues, and friends the gift of God’s abundant blessings, Dr. K
