I'm not sure what it will look like in a few hours, but...

HANG SENG 22,570.41
-641.28
-2.76%


It's already down ALMOST 3 PERCENT!  Remember what happened last time China crashed? (It was down 8.8%, on Feb. 27, 2007) The whole world followed the next day. Will it go even lower tonight? Who knows.

Anyhow, the US Stock Market didn't exactly have a great week last week. In fact, it crashed about 150 points in the last 1/2 hour to finish 200 points down for the day.

More of the same on Monday? Probably.

At some point, profit-makers will overcome the profit-takers.

I just don't think this is the next bear. That shouldn't be for a year or two, if historical trends continue to hold. In addition, while not always reflected in various equities markets, our recessions have tended to coincide with the start of each new decade, since the 1960s.

And, there historically has been a speculative frenzy in housing just before decade's end. One would think that impossible with the latest news. But again, many will also see opportunity with lower prices, or discount prices in turnover property. The question will then be, do the banks make such speculation possible, as they always have?

People may already have forgotten about market crashes in the past. But one only needs to recall 1987, and something called, Black Monday, not just in US equity markets, but particularly elsewhere around the world. The current correction we are seeing is not even yet 10%. In 1987, the US so-called 'industrial' average fell about 23% in a week.

The Hong Kong market, as today, was tied to the US dollar. It's not quite so strongly tied today. But then it lost almost half its value in the same period. It dropped 45%. Yet very shortly afterward, going into the 'holidays', people and institutions again began buying equities/stocks. That was a startling correction, perhaps some say exaggerated by unregulated program trading. It wasn't the bear market, which shortly followed.

Remember, too, that one ought to refer to percentages. Because the actual scalar, the number used, for these indices could be many factors larger today, than then. When the US 'industrials' crashed in 1987, they dropped not from a high of 14,000, but of 2700.