Two weeks ago, on quad-witch Friday March 20 which (so far) marked the lows of the coronavirus crisis, when US stocks plunged to levels not seen since late 2016, we showed a staggering chart from BofA putting the crash of 2020 in its historic context: in less than a month, the US stock market has crashed faster than both the Great Depression and Black Monday, and in terms of the total drawdown, the crash of 2020 is now worse than 1929 and is fast approaching 1987.

And while we have shown that the initial drop of the current crisis was more violent and rapid than the first leg of either the Black Monday crash or the Great Depression, the far more relevant question asked by traders, is what happens next if we use the 1987 and 1929 benchmarks as a reference. Will we "retest", or was March 20 the low, something which Morgan Stanley says is "the number one question we continue to discuss with clients", the same "number one" question that Goldman's clients were asking a week ago.

To answer that question we show Morgan Stanley's updates to these charts as they both remain remarkably on track for one of these episodes to play out.

In other words, if we are now re-living 1987, then a retest of the lows is imminent at which point the last of the bulls will be cleared out, leading to more near-term pain but also a faster recovery.