1995: Robert E. Brennan, former chairman of First Jersey Securities Inc., is ordered by a Federal judge to pay $71.5 million in fines and penalties for "massive and continuing" securities fraud. The judge rules that First Jersey — whose TV commercials used to show Brennan next to his company helicopter, challenging viewers to "Come grow with us" — cheated investors out of at least $27 million and illegally manipulated the prices of at least six penny stocks that it had underwritten.

The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 1995, p. B4.

1991: International Business Machines Corp. warns that its second-quarter revenues will fall at least 5% and that it will miss analysts' earnings estimates of nearly $1 per share by roughly 50 cents. That's IBM's first decline in annual revenues since 1946, sending Wall Street analysts into a deep funk about the future of technology stocks. However, some do see a few bargains out there: Barry Willman of Sanford C. Bernstein recommends Digital Equipment, Steve Milunovich of Salomon Bros. likes Data General, and Mark Stahlman of Alex. Brown is bullish on Commodore International. (Within a few years, none of them will still exist as a public company.)

The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 1991, pp. A3, C1.

1931: With major banks going kaput in Vienna, U.S. President Herbert Hoover proposes a one-year suspension of collecting interest payments on European war debts in order to prevent Germany and Austria from running out of gold reserves. The U.S. stock market, foreseeing a global economic recovery, goes on a tear: The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaps 6.64% today, closing at 138.96 — and, over the next six trading days, it rises another 13%. But it's nothing but a "dead-cat bounce": By year-end, the market will fall 43.9% from here.

Barrie A. Wigmore, The Crash and Its Aftermath: A History of Securities Markets in the United States, 1929-1933 (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, and London, 1985), pp. 210, 236;Peter L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2000), p. 310