What nickname was given to the sharp global market sell-off on October 19, 1987?

The sharp global market sell-off on October 19, 1987, was called Black Monday.

The name refers to the day when stock markets around the world fell suddenly and heavily. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6 percent, while other major indexes recorded even larger percentage declines. The Hong Kong market suffered the most severe drop among major exchanges.

Several factors were discussed afterward, including high valuations, rising interest rates, trade tensions, investor fear, and computer-driven trading strategies. No single universally accepted cause explains every market’s movement. The speed of the decline also raised concerns about the ability of trading systems to cope with extraordinary order volumes.

Black Monday is sometimes confused with other “Black” market days, especially Black Tuesday in 1929 and Black Thursday in 1929. Those labels belong to different crashes, and the 1987 event occurred decades later. Markets recovered over time, and the crash did not produce a Depression-era economic collapse.