Stockmarket crash: more to come

The stockmarket crash was hard and sudden – and it might not be over yet. But while the short term outlook is awful, says Merryn Somerset Webb, that does not mean that the long term does not exist.

In the short term, things are looking awful © Getty
(Image credit: Stock trader © Getty)

I was at school when the FTSE All Share crashed in October 1987. That crash was as sudden as this one.

On 15 October, the UK government published the sale details of its remaining stake in BP (at the time, this was to be the world’s largest equity listing). The price was set at 330p. No one was worried. By the 20th, the price was down to 286p and Nigel Lawson was under pressure to pull the issue – using a slightly dodgy force majeure clause to do so. He refused and the shares closed at 85p on the first day of dealing.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.