One Miracle Short on Wall Street

Ellis Henican

September 18, 2001

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It was going to be a "patriot's rally."

All weekend, the biggest names of American business were boldly wishing it so. The Warren Buffetts. The Jack Welches. Even the wannabes like Donald Trump.

The New York Stock Exchange wouldn't just open Monday morning at the corner of Wall and Broad, they said. It would roar back to life!

"I won't be selling anything," Buffett said straight out, which is how the prescient Oracle of Omaha says most things.

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It would be "crazy," Buffett declared, to start dumping stocks "if you owned a piece of American business that you felt good about a week ago."

Welch, who retired as chairman of General Electric four days before the terror attacks, told Bloomberg he, too, would "just hold" his American stocks. "My view is that this is the best place in the world to invest."

Larry Kramer, the CBS MarketWatch commentator, went even further. He exhorted his market-savvy acolytes to "send a message" to the terrorists through the market: "On Monday," he urged, "invest as much and as often as you can in America."

What a dreary difference a day can make.

So what exactly happened on Wall Street yesterday?

Why was all the talk of buying and holding suddenly replaced by the frantic act of selling, then selling some more?

How did we go from "patriot's rally" to the largest one-day point drop since the days of Adam Smith?

The problem wasn't any lack of stirring symbol or soaring rhetoric.

"Let us celebrate these wonderful men and women," Richard Grasso, the highly regarded chairman of the stock exchange, said just before the opening bell, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with others on a balcony above the trading floor. Besides the usual gaggle of politicians, he was surrounded by a splendid group of New York firefighters, paramedics and cops.

"We're going to stick our thumb in the eye of the murderers," vowed the U.S. Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill.

The first bell, a solitary peal, was rung precisely at 9:30. But trading didn't resume right away.

Two minutes of silence were observed first, honoring the dead and the missing and the most tireless rescue crews on earth. Then came an a cappella rendition of "God Bless America."

Haunting.

At which point the firemen, 'medics and cops rang the bell for real. Raucously. Repeatedly. Clang, clang, clanging the market back to life.

Then, something disappointing occurred.

Perhaps it should have been expected. Miracles even in New York are rare.