Time has a way of making real...

Time has a way of making real past events seem too surreal to have happened--even though they did. Nine years ago, the stock market suffered its worst crash since the Depression. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 508.00 points to 1,738.74 on that Monday, Oct. 19, 1987--a 22.6% loss--as panic selling set in after two months of sliding prices. From the Dow’s 1987 peak of 2,722.42 points on Aug. 25 to the Oct. 19 bottom, the index fell 36%. A similar decline today would slash the Dow, now at 6,094.23 points, to 3,900. But, of course, few investors want to think about that possibility. In fact, a recent survey of 1,014 mutual fund investors by Liberty Financial found that only 5% believe the market will drop more than 30% in any one year between now and 2006.