In the first half-hour of trading the Footsie dropped nearly 10 per cent. It was signalling the biggest ever fall in points terms. More significantly, and only slightly less impressively, it was pointing to the third-biggest fall in percentage terms. Every single Footsie stock was down for most of the day as was every stock in the FTSE Mid-250.
And the best performers below Britain's top 350 companies were put warrants, instruments which give the right to sell shares.
However, by the close of trading, the dramatic headlines were looking distinctly overdone. Footsie had rallied to close only 85.3 off at 4,755.4, although the less volatile second-line indices remained under pressure. The FTSE 250 dropped 239 to 4,528.4 and the SmallCap 105 to 2,257.5.
On the surface, early parallels with the crash of October 1987, when the British market fell 23 per cent in two days, were striking.
But strategists remained keen to hold the line, arguing that Britain had become unfairly "mugged by the international markets".
Economists pointed out that Britain did not have the stretched valuations seen in other European markets and in the US. They added that, with institutional cash holdings at a six-year high and hardly any paper washing around the market in the form of rights issues, the hunger for equities would soon re-emerge.
In fact, the day's drama was almost over as soon as it began, although the worry dragged on for longer.
Footsie was 266 points down after the first minute and 428 points off within the first 10 minutes as the British market responded to heavy falls in New York and Hong Kong. It hit a low of 4,382.2 after half an hour and traded between 300 and 400 points off in an uneasy swell ahead of Wall Street.
By early afternoon, the S&P futures were "limit down" and indicating an early fall of at least 150 points off the Dow.
In the first half-hour of US trading the Dow was, as expected, almost 200 points adrift. But then it turned the corner and, before London closed, it was showing a gain of 100 points. Suddenly, the market had a very ordinary feel to it. The blue-chip index was down only 1.8 per cent and, according to the order book, 22 Footsie stocks were showing a net gain, although British Energy was the only FTSE Mid-250 stock up by the close.
