Just before 9 a.m. ET on September 11th, I was sitting in my pit on the P-Coast, getting ready for the trading day, when strange reports started coming across the tape. We turned on CNBC just in time to see a second plane crash into the Twin Towers.

I’d been to downtown Manhattan many times. The Towers weren’t far from Wall Street, and the New York Stock Exchange—then and now the heart of Wall Street—was right there. When the Towers collapsed, it became clear: there would be no trading that day.

The markets never opened. It reminded me of when the P-Coast shut down for two weeks after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was on the floor for that, too—and I was glad to be there. Bricks were falling off buildings, and people died in the streets.

That morning, my wife called, urging me to come home. People were flooding out of downtown San Francisco. The NYSE announced it would stay closed, and every exchange followed suit—no one knew where the next target might be. My partner and I grabbed a cab and watched everything unfold on TV: grounded flights, chaos in D.C., total mayhem.

What began as a one-day closure turned into five full trading days as firms scrambled to assess their positions. In hindsight, that experience felt like a dry run for COVID. It was a disaster, but the financial system had to stay functional. Since then, we’ve never had a five-day market closure again—and likely never will.

When the markets finally reopened, it marked the true end of the Dotcom boom. Volatility exploded at the open, then dropped by half by the close. That day was the bottom—until mid-2002, when the Invesco QQQ Trust (Ticker: QQQ) sank below $20. Today, QQQ is flirting with $590.

As we head deeper into the AI boom 24 years later, keep that perspective in mind: AI isn’t going anywhere—but that doesn’t mean the stocks won’t get a whole lot cheaper first.

To Your Trading Success,

AG