Today is the anniversary of Black Thursday, October 24, 1929.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

Looks like they've staged a reenactment in the stock-index futures market.

Bloomberg, 45 minutes ago:

Trading in S&P 500 futures expiring in December on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has been limited to stop the contracts from falling below 855.20, the exchange said.

Trading below that level will resume when U.S. exchanges open for regular trading at 9:30 a.m. New York time, said Jeremy Hughes, a London-based spokesman for the CME.

6:57AM Edit: The Dow futures just hit its limit down:

Trading in futures on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been limited after declines in the contracts of more than 6 percent triggered a so-called limit down restriction.

Dow Average futures won't trade below the 8,224 level.

(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aZRWfr8j_IXc&refer=us)

8:35AM Edit: The NASDAQ didn't want to be left out. From http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/10/20/daily86.html:

Market officials said the 6 percent limit down trading curb would not allow the contracts to decline further until the Wall Street opening at 9:30 a.m. Nasdaq 100 futures reached their limit down of 84.75 points, or 6.8 percent, to 1168.50 at 6:55 a.m.

Who knows, maybe after everyone's had a chance to reflect, we'll have a bounce at market open. That's the way it's supposed to work, right?

And in the real economy...

...a candidate for statistic of the day:

Volvo said it received 115 order bookings for heavy trucks in Europe in the third quarter, down from 41,970 trucks a year earlier. Customers in Europe are taking a ``wait and see'' attitude amid turmoil in global financial markets, Volvo said.

Volvo plummeted 9 kronor, or 21 percent, to 34.20 kronor, and was down 19 percent as of 11:03 a.m.

(from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHDYgaVOzcYY&refer=home)