Everyone wants to know when things will get better on Wall Street.

In the past, it's taken considerable time to recover from crashes and for investors to regain their confidence and decide it was safe to put their money into stocks again.

For example, when the market crashed in October, 1987, sending the Dow Jones industrial average down 508 points, the blue chips had tumbled 36 percent from a then-record close set the previous August. It took about 15 months for the Dow to get back to its pre-crash level, and almost two years to reach a new closing high.

The recovery from the 1929 crash spanned a quarter century.

The Dow has a large percentage drop to regain this time. By Friday's close, the average had fallen more than 5,700 points, about 40 percent from its record finish last October.

Even with Monday's advance of 936 points, the Dow remains almost 34 percent below its record close.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)