Time in a bottle

This (above) is a monthly chart of the Australian S&P/ASX200 Share Price Index, logarithmic scale, showing the 1987 crash and the structure of the recovery. It took about 10 years to make a new high and spent most of that time bobbing above and below the 50% retracement level.

Same chart, expanded to the present. The red vertical line indicates the scale of the drop in 1987 and now is essentially identical (this is on a log scale axis). The bottom of the '88 drop and '08 top bookend the almost textbook 20 year bull run.

The '87 drop was not the result of any systemic risk problems and was obviously much quicker to develop, so the sudden impact may have had a greater depression/impression on "market psychology". This one may take more or less time to play out, and the slo-mo crunch could have greater lasting risk avoidance implications. The systemic problems are different this time, but both the Berlin and the Great Walls have disappeared.

History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.