It was 10 years ago today. Traders in Europe and the US woke up to news of a huge fall in the Shanghai stock market. Then things got interesting. This is how I started that day's Short View column:
When did the much-expected wave of risk aversion of 2007 finally break? It can be timed with precision. At 2:57 on Tuesday afternoon in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 12,346.33 — off about 2 per cent for a day on which traders had been spooked by 9 per cent falls in Chinese stock indices overnight. By 3:02 it had dropped to 12,089.02 — off more than 540 points for one of the worst days in history.
Here is that day’s Short View: