With a few word changes this begans to sound like a current decade news story. Might it play out the same again?

The collapse of the silver market meant countless losses for speculators. The Hunt brothers declared bankruptcy. By 1987 their liabilities had grown to nearly $2.5 billion against assets of $1.5 billion. In August of 1988 the Hunts were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market.

The stock market had its own troubles during the rise and fall of silver. The Dow Jones peaked on February 13, 1980 at 903.84. The day of the collapse, March 27th, the Dow closed at 759.98, a decline of 16% in just 6 weeks. [However, intraday, the loss between the 2/13 high of 918.17 and the 3/27 intraday low of 729.95 was actually 20%.]

For many traders the collapse in silver was the final straw for a stock market already under siege from worries as diverse as the Iranian hostage crisis, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and soaring interest rates. [The consumer price index climbed at a 13% rate for 1979. The prime lending rate hit 22% in early 1980]. But by the year's end, the whole decline was almost forgotten. The Dow ended the year at 963.99, thanks in large part to the euphoria over the election of Ronald Reagan.