Elaine Garzarelli

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Elaine M. Garzarelli (born in Springfield, Pennsylvania) is an American financial analyst.

Garzarelli received her first degree from New York University^[1] and went on to receive her doctorate from Drexel University in 1977.^[2] While working as a stock analyst, she became known for "predicting" Black Monday, the stock market crash of 1987. More accurately, her financial analysis indicated that the market was overvalued, leading her to sell about 50% of the stocks in her fund while making other hedges against a crash. The timing of her actions—Black Monday came about a week later—led to her being dubbed as someone who had "predicted" the crash. Her later comments that "I felt awkward because I got so much attention. A few weeks after that I made a negative comment, and the market dropped 120 points that day. The Wall Street Journal wrote that I had moved the stock market, and I was very uncomfortable. My career was going very nicely until then, and it was too much attention. It was a lot of pressure." indicate her discomfort with being put on a pedestal as a seer with a crystal ball.^[3] In the spring of 2003, shortly before a prolonged multi-year bull market, she predicted "a stock market stuck in a holding pattern for years."^[4]

Garzarelli was a partner and managing director at several major brokerage firms until 1995 when she founded her own business, Garzarelli Research, Inc.. For eleven years she had been ranked first team in Quantitative Analysis in Institutional Investor magazine's all-star poll.^{[citation needed]}