2000: Jeffrey M. Applegate, chief U.S. investment strategist for Lehman Brothers, tells BusinessWeek, "Technology stocks are the growth stocks of our era, period." Adds Applegate: "Is the stock market riskier today than two years ago simply because prices are higher? The answer is no." Applegate recommends that his clients have at least 60% of their portfolios in tech stocks (nearly twice the market weighting). Is that really such a good idea? "You bet," declares Applegate. Over the next year, tech stocks lose over half their value as their earnings growth completely disappears.

BusinessWeek, April 10, 2000, pp. 188-190

1991: The Leningrad Commodity and Stock Exchange (now the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange) re-opens for trading after decades of closure under Communism. Upon opening, it does a banner business in scrap wood and TV sets.

1968: Total daily trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange exceeds 20 million for the first time, as 20,413,340 shares change hands.

1951: An economics student at Princeton University submits his 123-page senior thesis, entitled "The Economic Role of the Investment Company." For mutual funds, he concludes, "future growth can be maximized by concentration on a reduction of sales loads and management fees." The student, John C. Bogle, later takes matters into his own hands, founding the Vanguard Group of Investment Cos. in 1974.

John C. Bogle, "The Economic Role of the Investment Company," senior thesis, Princeton University, April 10, 1951, p. 122;kindly provided to Jason Zweig by John C. Bogle.

1822: The merchant ship Cambria docks in New York harbor with a news flash: The Bank of England has lowered its discount rate from 5% to 4%. Bank stocks lose 14% of their value in two hours as Wall Street digests the latest from London (which took a mere two weeks to cross the ocean).

James K. Medbery, Men and Mysteries of Wall Street (Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1870;reprinted, Fraser Publishing Co., Wells, VT, 1968) p. 289.

1792: In the wake of the nation's first stock market crash a month earlier, the New York State legislature enacts a law banning public stock auctions, the Act to Prevent the Pernicious Practice of Stock-Jobbing and for Regulating Sales at Public Auction. The new law notwithstanding, stock trading continues.

Walter Werner and Steven Smith, Wall Street (Columbia University Press, New York, 1991), p. 18, 199;"Today in NYSE History," at www.nyse.com/about/TodayInNYSE.html