Have we hit the bottom yet?

Yesterday was among the worst days that global stock markets have ever seen. After such hefty falls, investors’ minds often turn to bargain-hunting. But is it really time for contrarians to start filling their boots?

Yet another Black Monday. As Manoj Ladwa at ETX Capital put it, they "used to be a once-in-a-decade event now they're coming along more regularly than London buses."

The FTSE 100 saw its largest-ever points fall yesterday, sinking nearly 400 points to 4,589. It's also the biggest percentage fall since the crash of 1987. It was by no means the only stock market to take a hammering. In the US, the Dow Jones closed down 3.6%, while the Russian market had to be closed (yet again) after falling 19%.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.