By 11am on Monday, the atmosphere on the London trading floor of spread-betting firm ETX Capital was electric.
Extra staff had been drafted in amid a surge in trading after oil prices plunged overnight and European markets tumbled due to coronavirus fears.
The usual day team of two or three traders had bulked up to nearly a dozen. Traders at the Liverpool Street office were glued to their phones, behind a wall of screens, their voices being drowned out by terminals bleating out alerts – dings, slide whistles and simulated space gun blasts – signalling fresh market moves and a flurry orders from clients.
“We’ve not seen anything like this since the financial crisis,” said Michael Baker, who leads ETX Capital’s sales team.
The firm blocked small investors from buying US stock futures due to fears that retail clients would lose too much money by taking a punt and buying on the dip. It ended up being the right call – with US futures plunging further once limits on sales were temporarily removed.
28 October 1929 The original Black Monday. The Dow plunged 13%, then a record, as the Great Wall Street Crash ended the bull market of the 1920s.
29 October 1929 The Dow plunged 12% amid a second day of panic selling, wiping out investors who had borrowed money to buy stocks.
19 October 1987 Wall Street’s worst day ever saw 22.6% wiped off the Dow, sparked by worries about the US economy and fuelled by new automatic trading programmes.
14 April 2000 The Nasdaq index plunged by 9% as the dotcom bubble burst, sending tech stocks down 25% in a single week.
17 September 2001 After 9/11, Wall Street remained closed until 17 September 2001, the longest shutdown since 1933. The Dow fell 7.1% or 685 points on that first trading day, with airlines and insurers leading the rout.and there were more steep losses in the days that followed. Among the biggest fallers were companies in the airline and insurance sectors.
15 July 2002 The FTSE 100 tumbled 5.4%, its worst daily loss during a poor year dominated by fears of war on Iraq, tensions in North Korea, and economic stagnation
10 October 2008 The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 triggered an autumn of wild plunges, with Britain’s FTSE 100 shedding 8.8% in a single session, its worst day after the 1987 crash.
22 September 2011 The FTSE 100 fell 4.6% as markets wobbled during the summer, hit by fears of a new global recession and the Greek debt crisis.
24 August 2015 The FTSE fell 4.7% or 289 points, wiping more than £70bn off the value of London-listed companies, amid a wider global sell-off, prompted by fears about the health of China’s economy.
9 March 2020 Fears of a global recession triggered by the coronavirus, and the launch of an oil price war, hit global markets. The FTSE 100 plunged 7.7% , pushing it into an official bear market.
The room was tense as staff prepared for the opening Wall St bell at 1:30pm. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” one dealer said.
Within minutes, the S&P 500 was halted from trading due to a 7% fall at the open. Traders shouted across banks of desks, yelling out trades as they tried to work out which stocks were still open for orders.
“I can’t buy mate, it’s limit down,” one trader yelled. “Just tried to buy the Nasdaq – but I can’t,” said another.
One trader’s computer was firing off notifications that sounded like an air raid siren. “I’m working to sell 100 [stocks],” one trader yelled. One client was looking to sell “50% of everything” they owned.
“This is a meltdown, this is an absolute meltdown,” Baker sighed.
Some investors, however, were still looking for bargains, with one trader shouting out an order for £2m worth of US shares. “Another million sterling has come in,” another dealer shouted.
Investors rushed to put in final orders ahead of the 4:30pm European market close, and finally some calm started to return to the ETX Capital floor.
The team would drop down to two on-site traders overnight to cover the US market close and the opening of Asian trading. But thanks to coronavirus crisis preparations, staff were on call to jump on to computers from home at a moment’s notice.
“It’s all hands on deck,” Baker said.
