October 16, 2008 With markets in freefall, Warren Buffett published "Buy American. I Am." in the New York Times. The S&P 500 closed at 946 that day. He wrote: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." And he put his own money where his mouth was: "This is my personal account I'm talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds." The market fell another 28% to 677 by March 2009. Today the S&P is at 7,659, up 8x from the day he wrote it. Being early isn't the same as being wrong.

March 29, 1990 Peter Lynch quit as head of Fidelity's Magellan fund. He averaged 29.2% a year for 13 years. $10K at the start would have grown to about $280,000. Assets went from $20 million to $14 billion. He was 46.

November 28, 1985 Costco announced it would go public at $10 a share. The IPO priced a week later, on December 5. Put $10K in at $10 and it'd be worth about $6 million today, through three stock splits. The hot dog and soda combo still costs $1.50.

September 28, 2022 Five days after Britain's £45 billion mini-budget, the Bank of England launched emergency bond-buying. Gilt yields had spiked and pension funds were facing margin calls. The Bank's deputy governor later said some funds were hours from being wound up.

February 5, 2018 XIV was a popular Wall Street bet that market volatility would stay low. Then volatility spiked 115% in a single day. The Dow fell 1,175 points, then the biggest point drop ever. XIV lost 96% and Credit Suisse shut it down. The VIX jumped about 30% last Friday. In 2018 it did 115% in an afternoon.

December 24, 2018 The Dow fell 653 points in a half-day session, the worst Christmas Eve in market history. The old record had stood since 1918. The Treasury secretary had spent the weekend calling bank CEOs to reassure everyone. It had the opposite effect. Two days later the Dow rose 1,086 points, then the biggest one-day point gain ever.

April 3, 2008 John Paulson ran a mergers fund. He knew nothing about mortgages. In 2005 he started buying insurance against subprime loans anyway. By the end of 2007 his firm had made $15 billion. The flagship fund was up 590%. The trade was tens of millions in the red first. He doubled down instead of quitting.

October 21, 1987 Two days after the worst crash in history, the Dow surged 186 points, up 10.1%. The biggest single-day gain since 1933. Yesterday's bounce was the cautious kind: the Dow rose 1%, the Nasdaq finished flat, and chip stocks kept sliding on AI-funding fears.

June 1, 2009 General Motors filed for bankruptcy: $173 billion in debt, the largest industrial bankruptcy in US history. Washington took a 60% ownership stake. Shareholders were wiped out. Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer were killed; Saab was sold. GM emerged 40 days later.

March 16, 2008 Bear Stearns, the 85-year-old investment bank, agreed to sell itself to JPMorgan for $2 a share on a Sunday night. A 93% discount to Friday's close. The Fed put up $30 billion to make it happen. Six months later, Lehman got no rescue at all.

March 30, 2000 Tiger's Julian Robertson quit after 18 years at 31.7% a year. He lost 19% in 1999; the Nasdaq gained 86%. "There is no point in subjecting our investors to risk in a market which I frankly do not understand." The top came 20 days earlier. Then the 78% crash.

March 12, 1986 Oracle went public at $15 a share, one day before Microsoft's IPO. Put $10K in at the IPO and it'd be worth ~$28 million today, through 10 stock splits. On October 14 it fell 9% on AI data-center borrowing fears. The boring database stock is the AI trade now.

October 20, 1987 The morning after Black Monday, stocks kept sliding and credit for brokers was drying up. Two months into the job, Fed chair Greenspan issued a statement before the open: the Fed stood ready "to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system." The Dow closed up 102 points. It gained 10% the next day.

October 28, 2008 Porsche revealed it controlled 74% of Volkswagen. Lower Saxony held 20%. That left 6% of shares for the 13% that was sold short. VW spiked to 1,000 euros and briefly became the most valuable company on Earth. The original GameStop.

March 26, 2021 Bill Hwang's family office was margin-called Friday and dumped $20 billion of stocks over the weekend. The $160 billion sat in hidden total-return swaps. Nobody knew the size until the selling started. Credit Suisse lost $5.5 billion on one client. One.

October 19, 1987 The Dow fell 508 points, 22.6%, still the worst single day in its history. Portfolio insurance programs sold futures mechanically as prices dropped. A record 604 million shares changed hands. The next two sessions recovered 57% of the loss. Under two years later the old high was back.

September 7, 2008 Paulson seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a Sunday morning: a 'temporary' takeover of the $5.4 trillion mortgage machine. Eighteen years later they're still government property. The 2026 privatization push stalled. 'Temporary' is doing a lot of work.

November 11, 2022 FTX filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. Bankman-Fried resigned the same day; the new CEO was John J. Ray III, the man who cleaned up Enron. Bitcoin was $16,800 then, around $80,000 now. Creditors got repaid at the crash price and missed the entire rebound.

January 19, 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy. The 131-year-old film giant's own engineer had built the first digital camera back in 1975. They invented the future, then watched it eat them.

September 29, 2008 The House rejected the $700 billion bailout, 228 to 205. The Dow fell 778 points, the worst single-day point drop in history at the time. Congress voted no. The market voted with its feet. They passed it four days later anyway.

January 26, 1994 IBM posted an $8.1 billion loss for 1993, the largest in US corporate history at the time. Nine months earlier they'd hired a CEO who'd never worked in tech. Lou Gerstner came from RJR Nabisco. The cookie guy saved Big Blue.