Editor's Note: Reporters will have access to the stock market experts at 2:15 p.m. in the Cabernet Room of the Sacramento Hilton Inn, located at 2200 Harvard Street, on Friday, Oct. 17. This month marks the 10th anniversary of one of the most dramatic stock market crashes on record. Nationally known financial experts in business and academia will debate the causes and consequences of stock market declines at a national conference Oct. 17-18, hosted by the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management. After showing signs of weakness in mid-October of 1987, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 23 percent on "Black Monday," causing turmoil in financial markets and fears of a major recession. The full decline of the Dow from Oct. 13 to 19 amounted to 31 percent, and investors suffered losses of nearly $1 trillion. Though 10 years have elapsed, the issues raised by the 1987 crash remain relevant. Nationally recognized practitioners and academics at the UC Davis conference in Sacramento will include Robert Parry, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Fred Grauer, chair of Barclays Global Investors; Nobel laureate William F. Sharpe, professor of economics at Stanford University; and Donald H. Straszheim, president of the Milken Institute and former chief economist at Merrill Lynch. Professor George Bittlingmayer, a stock market expert in the business school at UC Davis, is the conference chair. "One of the lessons learned from the '87 stock market crash is that market integrity and not volatility influences individual investor behavior," says Grauer. "The psychology at the time of the crash was to establish blame. There was a general unwillingness to 'face the music' which exacerbated the recovery." "Crashes have typically occurred when public policy turned against business, said Bittlingmayer. "Unfortunately, investors can't tell when the hammer's going to fall." "But unlike the 1920s or the mid-1980s, investors currently recognize that policies can shift," Bittlingmayer noted. "So even though stock values are high now, people have a more realistic attitude about what can happen in the future." The discoveries of new technologies, particularly in the biotechnology area, will have a major impact on the stock market, according to Straszheim. He is very optimistic that these new technologies will bring about a period of very strong economic growth that will be reflected in the stock market. Other speakers will include Charles M.C. Lee, professor of finance at Cornell University; Owen Lamont, professor of finance at the University of Chicago; and Robert Haugen, professor of finance at UC Irvine. Each will address issues related to stock volatility and expected returns. For more details: http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/~gnbittli/Crash_Bash/.