11-10-26: Food for Thought (and Action) on Veteran’s Day

by Gary Alexander

November 10, 2026

Tomorrow marks Veteran’s Day, first called Armistice Day, marking the end of the Great War (to end all wars) on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918 – a date of mixed blessings, as the postwar penalties on Germany clearly sowed seeds for World War II, as indicated in John Maynard Keynes’ fine memoir from his role at the Versailles conference of 1919, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.”

Although markets will remain open tomorrow, many businesses will close doors to honor our Veterans, so let me take this opportunity to review some of the important American benchmarks on this historic date;

On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower set anchor in what is now Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. On that day, the Mayflower Compact was drafted and signed by the 41 male Pilgrims. The Mayflower Compact was later hailed as the origin of democratic institutions that soon defined America:

“Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11^th of November” – The Mayflower Compact

These bolded words (above) carry special resonance in the echoes of last week’s election results.

In addition, today marks the Marine Corps’ 251^st birthday: On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress passed a resolution in Philadelphia chartering “two Battalions of Marines: to serve as landing forces for the U.S. Naval Fleet.” After the war, the Marines went out of commission for a generation until terrorism off the “shores of Tripoli” generated a battle call for sea-land action against a cabal of pirates.

Just before the Armistice was forged on 11-11-18, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, two-days before the Armistice was signed, sowing seeds that later germinated as a “selling out” of German interests when the sides were still in stalemate, not defeat. Many Germans certainly didn’t feel they had “lost” that war…yet.

On the fifth anniversary of the Kaiser’s abdication, on November 9, 1923, the day after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, armed Nazis staged a last-ditch coup attempt by marching 3,000 zealots into the center of Munich. Near the War Ministry building, they faced a far smaller (100) line of armed policemen. Shots rang out, leaving 16-Nazis and three-policemen dead. Hermann Goring was shot in the groin, and Hitler suffered a dislocated elbow from a fall but managed to escape. He was captured three-days later. He could have been executed or sent to prison for life, but he served only nine-months, writing Mein Kampf.

On the same day, an Eternal flame was lit for the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb at the Arc de Triumph, Paris.

On November 9, 1938, exactly 20-years after the Kaiser’s skedaddle day, and 15-years after the Munich putsch, the Nazis staged Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), looting over 7,500 Jewish businesses, burning 267-Jewish synagogues, killing 91-Jews who resisted, and sending 25,000 Jews to concentration camps. The Nazis then billed the Jewish business owners for the damages that they had “provoked.”

Two-days later, November 11, 1938, 20-years after Armistice Day, November 11 first became a national U.S. holiday, by Congressional resolution on this day. Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on radio that day, with the opening verse beginning, “As the storm clouds gather far across the sea.”  Berlin actually wrote the song in 1918 in World War I when he was in an Army basic training camp, but he thought it was too sacred to put into his comic show “Yip, Yip Yaphank” for servicemen about to be shipped overseas, so he put it in his trunk for 20-years until the “storm clouds gathered” once again.

On November 11, 1954, President Eisenhower signed a bill that changed Armistice Day to Veteran’s Day, and on November 10, 1982, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.

And finally, tying all these threads together, on the night of November 9, 1989, the 28-mile (and 28-year) long Berlin Wall, the most chilling emblem of the Cold War, was taken down in one night, with no shots fired. By morning, even East German guards were carrying away some rocks for souvenirs. By year’s end, all seven Soviet satellites toppled like dominoes, confirming that once-maligned theory that, “If one nation falls, the nation next to it might fall.” That certainly happened after Vietnam fell in 1975, and after the Wall came down. On November 10, 1989, the second-domino fell, the morning after the Berlin Wall collapsed, as the Bulgarian communist party president, Todor Zhivkov resigned after 35-years in power.

On the same day the Berlin Wall fell, the first version of Word Perfect 5.1 was shipped, so let’s look at the market actions on this day, delivering one basic lesson: “Bear markets will pass. Stocks will rise again.”

Buy During Market Bottoms in November (or Any Other Month)

On November 9, 1903, the Dow Jones industrials reached their lowest point of the new century, hitting 42.15. This 1903 low was exceeded only once – nearly 30 years later, on July 8, 1932, at Dow 41.22.

At first glance, that says the market went nowhere in almost 30-years, but along the way, the Dow rose over 9-fold, to 381.17 in 1929, and the Dow actually doubled from the start of the World War I (at Dow 52.32 on July 30, 1914) to Dow 119.62 on November 3, 1919, a week before the first Armistice Day.

The Dow reached its 1929 low on November 13, 1929, losing 48% in just 10-weeks, but a change of leadership in the next election reversed the market mood. First came the market bottom in July 1932, during the week Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated as the Democratic candidate to oppose incumbent Herbert Hoover. The fall election came on November 8 that year, with FDR winning in a landslide. The market loved that outcome. In the week of November 7-11, 1932, the Dow rose 6.5 points (+10.6%) after FDR carried all but seven states winning 472-59 in electoral votes and with 57.5% of the popular vote.

On that Friday night, November 11, 1932, NBC opened its new studios at Radio City Music Hall in New York, as the audience sang “Happy Days Are Here Again” in the grand opening that night. Ironically that song debuted on Broadway on October 24, 1929, two miles from Wall Street, on “Black Thursday,” but this time around, the musical magic worked, as the Dow index rose from 41.22 in the week after FDR was nominated to 194.4 on March 10, 1937, shortly after his second Inaugural, a 372% rise in the mid-1930s!

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the stock market quadrupled in the next decade…and then kept rising:

To be fair, the Consumer Price Index is up 167% since November 10, 1989, so the “real” market gains are a little less than cited in this table, but the gains become very real when we account for dividends, which roughly approximate the inflation drain. Using the S&P 500 as the best overall market metric, real gains (after inflation and re-invested dividends) were +1,636%, not very far below the 2,075% nominal gains.

We should recall these great gains at Thanksgiving, 2026 – and during any scary market correction day.