A Day of Steep Declines

September 17, 2008


Today’s market soundly contradicted yesterday’s headline Has Recovery Started? The NASDAQ dropped -4.94 percent, its worst day since 2001. The other two indices did not lose as much, with the S&P500 off -4.71 percent and the DJIA down -4.06 percent.

Large drops are not unusual for the NASDAQ. Since its inception in 1971, there have been 55 closes deeper than minus four percent, 40 of which occurred in this century.

The history of the DJIA is a bit better, with losses exceeding minus four percent on just 20 days, and six since January 2000. The S&P500, however, had 17 such days, with just four in this century

(Posted at 9:15 AM, September 19, resulting from data glitch.)

DJIA -4.06 percent

NASDAQ -4.94 percent

S&P500 -4.71 percent

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