House to Wall Street: Drop Dead

Today was the Dow’s worst point decline ever. The decline amounted to 777.68 points which is more than the Dow was worth at its 1982 low (btw, the Nasdaq closed at 1983 today). On a percentage basis, the Dow lost 6.98%.
Think about this: The sell-off erased $1.2 trillion off the stock market which was in response to a bailout plan of $700 billion.
The S&P 500 lost 106.62 points which is a total of 8.79%. That’s unusual that the Dow held up so much better than the S&P. Our Buy List was “only” down 6.11%.
By percentage terms, this was the worst selloff for the S&P 500 since 1987. My data only goes back to 1950, so it’s the second-worse sell-off since then.
By my records, this is 21st worst percentage decline for the Dow since the index began in 1896. Although, I saw a report from AP saying it was the 17th worst. The Christian Science Monitor said it was the 18th worst.
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Posted by on September 29th, 2008 at 9:17 pm


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