2nd Time Around, Traders Just as Dazed - Wall Street: Inside and outside the New York Stock Exchange, grim memories of October, 1987, resurface.

He came out of the members’ entrance of the New York Stock Exchange with a dazed look on his face and muttering to himself: “Two hundred points it dropped . . . 200 points.”

He didn’t want to talk with the throng of reporters who had gathered on the street, drawn by the deepest plunge in the Dow Jones industrial index since the crash of 1987. What’s more, after a day like this, the last thing he was going to give out was his name.

Like most other brokers and specialists at the end of Friday’s trading, he wanted to get away--quickly and with no comment.

What had started as a rather routine day, with many traders no doubt dreaming of their weekend plans, suddenly turned into a fright in the final hour as the Dow plummeted 190.58 points. The shock and speed of the decline raised ugly memories of the epic stock panic nearly two years ago to the day.

“It’s not fun, it’s not fun,” a middle-age man in a trench coat mumbled as he emerged from the exchange building. “People were taking a little bit of a beating in there.”

“It was very ugly, nothing but sell, sell, sell,” said another man who agreed to talk briefly before climbing into his limousine. Asked what caused the free fall, he replied: “Maybe it was overdue. Nobody knows the answers.”

“It’s Friday the 13th and a full moon,” said another in response to the same question.

According to Jim Albanese, who works in purchasing sales for a Wall Street firm, the scene as the members left the exchange, while grim enough, did not compare to that on “Black Monday” two years ago. “Most people were going out the windows then,” he quipped.

When one rosy-cheeked man came out of the entrance with a smile on his face instead of the stunned expression most others wore, Albanese remarked: “He probably owns ‘puts.’ The only people smiling are the people that own puts. The more the market goes down, the more money they make.”

(A put is an option that gives the right to sell shares of a specific stock, at a specific price, within a specific time period.)

As he emerged from the exchange building, Bob Trimble said that he was only a “little scared.” “We’ve been through this before,” he added.

The sight of so many reporters and television cameras also drew many curiosity-seekers to the scene.

But one young woman with corn-row braids was disappointed to learn that it was only the stock market that was creating so much interest. “I thought maybe Ronald Reagan was here,” she said.

Meanwhile, at Harry’s Bar, a traditional Wall Street watering hole, one bartender turned philosophic, saying it was “just another day in the life of Wall Street.”

However, a customer quickly countered: “He can laugh. He’s only a $2 player.”