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Compute the risk if the market crashes like Monday 19th October 1987

Just type in the values of your longs and shorts and then press compute to see the calculation

With this simple formula you can truly know what you are risking in a sudden market crash.

The panic of the 1987 crash

 Give it a try: Simply enter the value of the longs and shorts in your portfolio


On October 19th 1987 the markets fell 22% in a single day


The protected versus the un-protected.

Did you ever wonder what will happen to your account if we have another 1987 style crash?

I have made this little calculator model so you quickly work it out.

The model assumes 100% correlation so please choose only stocks and index futures etc that are highly correlated to the main markets or it can

lead to unreliable results.

During violent market declines stock correlation tends to increase as high as 100% to the index it is contained in.

If you have a basket of Commodities or Forex you cannot use them in this model as they would not be correlated in the same manner.

In the UK in October 1987 there was a big storm that occurred the night before the crash.

Many fences and trees got destroyed and it was an expensive time for the insurance industry.
 
The crash came with nice storms which destroyed a lot of trees
 

Do not add Forex, Commodities or Cryptos to this table EG - Not Bitcoin, Gold, Oil, Silver, Wheat etc

These will behave differently during a big crash and will give misleading results below.


THE 1987 CRASH CALCULATOR




Value of your longs

  

Value of your shorts

  

Margin on your account

  

Your profits on the 1987 crash day

 

Your account balance would be after the crash

 






What to do to protect yourself from a crash?

Many methods exist.


HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM A VIOLENT MARKET CRASH?


In the calculator, the presence of a few short positions which profit from a market collapse greatly reduces the risk of wiping out your account.

On a negative note, short selling can lead to complete disaster if a trader lacks the discipline to cut a loss when the price rises.

I have heard some incredible stories of people losing their homes and wiping out their accounts by holding shorts way too long.

Being short carries UNLIMITED LOSS POTENTIAL, as there is no upper limit for prices.

On a more positive note however, a responsible risk averse trader will know how to handle short positions with care and use them to his

advantage.


There are many methods to protect yourself from a market crash. Those with a 100% long portfolio are most at risk.

Lets look at some examples and the resulting profit and balanced remaining after a 22% crash.


1. Have a more balanced portfolio by mixing up some short trades into your bucket.

During a long bull market it is hard work to find stocks that will fall in price.

I used to spend hours looking for them and most of the short trades I placed during a bull market were losing trades.

It did not matter as the total value of my long portfolio positions were around 8 or 9 times greater than the value of my shorts.

Doing this reduces risk of crash damage by some percentage thus.


Having 0% of the porfolio in shorts all accounts have $100,000 starting balance

Un-hedged $100,000 portfolio would have dropped 22% would result in a loss of $22,000

Leaving you with
$78,000 left in the account if 1987 came along again.


Having 10% of the porfolio in shorts

Long value = $90,000  Short value = $10,000 would equate to $82,400 which is a loss of $17,600


Having 25% of the porfolio in shorts

Long value = 75,000  Short value = 25,000 would equate to $89,000 which is a loss of $11,000


Having 33.33% of the porfolio in shorts

Long value = $66,666  Short value = $33,333 would equate to $92,666 which is a loss of $7,333


Having 50% of the porfolio in shorts

Long value = $50,000  Short value = $50,000 would equate to $100,000 which in a loss of ZERO

Pair trading 

What is pair trading?

This is often the preferred method of many financial institutions and this is 50% long - 50% short as described above.

The basic idea is to pick two stocks from the same sector and buy the strong one and short the weak one with the same

size of trade to have completely neutralized market risk.

This method is very smart as there are always weak stocks and strong stocks in the same sector none of them have equal

performance.

Total removal of market risk is a relaxed position to be in. You do not have to be concerned about a crash coming.

You are still exposed to idiosyncratic risk of each individual stock flying up or down against your position.




2. Use some positions in traded options instead of stocks

This operation is very flexible and beyond the scope of this article but the general principle is to keep a low value bunch of

long trades that is around 50% of the total portfolio so even if there was a 100% crash you still have half your account left

undamaged.

After this, then some call options are purchased in the more exciting upward moving markets which might take up say 10% of the portfolio

value so again if the market crashed 100% you still have 40% left.

The geared nature of traded options allows gains to be made but the downside is the time decay nature of calls can eat up the premium if the

price does not go up enough to pay for itself.

Put options can also be bought in this mixture. Infinite possibilites arise when one considers this type of trading.



3. Use put options to hedge your portfolio


I have prepared a detailed explanation here which opens in a new tab  Hedging a portfolio with traded options



4. Use an under geared portfolio

This is for the risk averse trader or investor and is simply only investing 20-30% of the value in the account so even a 100%

crash leaves you retaining 70-80% of your cash.

The obvious downside to this is that you will not make as much money as those who risked more.

 

The panic of a crash in a futures pit

 

5. Leaving stop orders to OPEN new short positions on a highly correlated index

This is for the risk averse trader but does carry another risk which is missing a fill due to big gaps.

You may not get filled at your stop entry price if the market opens up with a gap or moves so fast to cause a lot of slippage.

Execution of this method is done by placing a stop entry to place a sell order to enter a short trade on the index futures which are closely

 related to the portfolio of stocks which you are holding.

EG. If you have $50,000 worth of long stock trades in the SP500 and $50,000 long stocks in the Russel index then you can place a stop order in

 each market to sell $50,000 worth of each contract.

Extra risk is potentially able to bite you if you get filled and the market rapidly rises up again and exceeds the new high meaning you will be

 net flat and have no potential to get gains.

 

6. Leaving stop orders to short sell stocks which are in the same sectors but not stocks which you are holding

This is going to work nicely if the market goes down slowly enough to fill your orders.

But as in example No5 the risk is that the market gaps through the stop and fills you at a lower price.

Avoiding this can be done with a "stop limit" which means a sell order with a stop level at 450 can have a limit of 440 put on it.

But this risks that if the opening price is 435 you dont get filled and miss out on getting any protection.

 

7. Using a combination of the above.

This is for the advanced trader with time to study and an ability to think things through.

Probably the best of all the methods as many nuances can be taken into account, again it is too complex for this example page.

 

8. Trusting the market to rise up again - "The hope method" for those who like to bury their heads in the sand.

This two photos below are the best way to describe this activity. Maybe it will be ok, or maybe you will die. Your choice.

Let the fox take care of your chickens for you and hope he does not feel very hungry?  Try this in 1929 at 355 and then scroll down

 

The fox eats chickens

 

Consider if you had trusted the fox to take care of your chickens in the chart below.

It was November 23rd 1954 which was TWENTY FIVE YEARS until for the market recovered to its previous 1929 peak.

Can you wait that long? Wait twenty five years through the great depression before admitting that holding your trade was wrong?

 

Most are not ready for a big crash and will ALWAYS blame the market for their losses.

Ask yourself if you are you prepared? Reading this basic introduction is a good start. Bravo.

This is a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 1929 to 1932 era when the market fell 89%.

History has always repeated itself. There are some interesting videos which are entertaining. Jesse Livermore's wife moving all the furtniture

into the garage because she thought he would have to sell their home.

He made more money on the day of the 1929 crash than he had ever done in a single day before. About $10,000,000 in one day.


The 1929 crash was the start of the great depression

The finer points of the 1929 crash are detailed in the GREAT VIDEOS on this page
 
Other pages on the same topic of risk control can be found here which demonstrate HOW TO COMPUTE OPTIMAL RISK.


You might also enjoy this COMPUTE MAXIMUM HIGH AND LOW PRICES 30 DAYS INTO THE FUTURE

 

Some trading practice with actual market prices in the Trading IQ Game  Prizes for the winner include my products and MultiCharts platform.



More educational content the pages below are for you Trading Lessons in several parts for newbies and improvers


Most unpopular page on PTS site is the page called "Correct answer"  hopefully you can find it instead of the popular "Incorrect answer" page.
 
 

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The contact page here has my email address and you can search the site

 

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Precision Trading Systems was founded in 2006 providing high quality indicators and trading systems for a wide range of markets and levels of experience.

Supporting NinjaTrader, Tradestation and MultiCharts, TradingView and MetaTrader 4 with MT5 soon.

 

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