Newspapers have limited real estate. It should be no surprise that the stock market failed to make the front page every day of 1929. It was competing against news about prohibition, bootleggers, tariffs, and politics for the top spot.
The market really only dominated the headlines for about two weeks out of the year. The big week was at the end of October. The rest was sporadically spread out during the year.
But in those two weeks, editorial cartoonists wonderfully captured the speculative phenomenon of the market bubble and crash. The gambling nature, the easy money mentality, mistiming the top, the promises never to do it again…until next time, they captured it all.
After digging through the headlines of 1929, the cartoons were too obvious to be ignored, so I grabbed some to share. Take a look:
St. Joseph Gazette, August 13, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, August 19, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, September 4, 1929
Chicago Daily Tribune, October 25, 1929
Chicago Daily Tribune, October 25, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, October 27, 1929
Florence Times News, October 29, 1929
Nashua Telegraph, October 30, 1929
Chicago Daily Tribune, October 30, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, October 31, 1929
Chicago Daily Tribune, October 31, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, November 10, 1929
St. Joseph Gazette, November 17, 1929
Last Call
- Why We Can’t Foresee the Pandemic’s Long-Term Effects – R. Shiller
- An Unlikely Hero for 1906, 1929…and Today – J. Zweig
- Massive Up and Down Moves in Stocks Are More Common Than You Think – A Wealth of Common Sense
- Why is Extrapolation so Dangerous for Investors? – Behavioral Investment
- A Viral Market Update: A Do-it-Yourself S&P 500 Valuation – Musings on Markets
- Should You Let Your Stocks Ride? – J. Reckenthaler
- This is the Strangest Economy Ever – D. Thompson
- No One Knows What Their Bond Fund Is Worth – Institutional Investor
- Charley Ellis: Why Active Investing Is Still a Loser’s Game (podcast) – The Long View
