Australia’s stock exchange was the first major market to reopen after the 1987 Black Monday crash. Its trading session began after the initial Asia-Pacific shock, before many other exchanges had resumed normal activity.
The crash moved across time zones, making the order of market openings important. Hong Kong’s market suffered a severe fall and temporarily closed, while markets in Europe and North America later absorbed the selling wave. Australia’s reopening is therefore often mentioned in accounts of the crash’s global sequence.
The episode showed how closely linked financial markets had become. Unlike a local exchange failure, the 1987 collapse spread rapidly through international trading hours, portfolio insurance strategies, and investor reactions. The crisis eventually prompted reforms such as coordinated communication and automatic trading halts.