August 24, 2015
We witnessed something truly historic happen on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 530 points, and that followed a 358 point crashon Thursday. When you add those two days together, the total two day stock market crash that we just witnessed comes to a grand total of 888 points, which is larger than any one day stock market crash in U.S. history. It is also interesting to note that this 888 point crash comes in the 8th month of our calendar. Perhaps that is just a coincidence, and perhaps it is not. It just struck me as being noteworthy. This is the first time that the Dow has dropped by more than 300 points on two consecutive days since November 2008, and we all remember what was happening back then. Overall, this was the worst week for the Dow in four years, and there have only been five other months throughout historywhen the Dow has fallen by more than a thousand points (the most recent being October 2008). Of course we still have six more trading days left in August, so there is plenty of time remaining for even more carnage.
By itself, the 530 point plunge on Friday was the ninth worst stock market crash in all of U.S. history. The following list of the top eight comes from Wikipedia…
#1 2008-09-29 −777.68
#2 2008-10-15 −733.08
#3 2001-09-17 −684.81
#4 2008-12-01 −679.95
#5 2008-10-09 −678.91
#6 2011-08-08 −634.76
#7 2000-04-14 −617.77
#8 1997-10-27 −554.26
Another very interesting thing to note is that the largest stock market crash in U.S. history took place on the very last day of the Shemitah year of 2008, and now we are less than a month away from the end of this current Shemitah year.
It is funny how these strange “coincidences” keep happening.
The financial carnage that we witnessed on Friday was truly global in scope. On a percentage basis, Chinese stocks crashed even more than U.S. stocks did. Japanese stocks also crashed, so did stock markets all over Europe, and emerging market currencies all over the planet got absolutely destroyed.
The following is how Zero Hedge summarized what went down…
- China’s worst week since July – closes at 5 month lows
- Global Stocks’ worst week since May 2012
- US Stocks’ worst week in 4 years
- VIX’s biggest weekly rise ever
- Crude’s longest losing streak in 29 years
- Gold’s best week since January
- 5Y TSY Yield’s biggest absolute drop in 2 years
Even though I specifically warned that this would happen, and have been explaining why it would happen on my website in excruciating detail for months, the truth is that I didn’t expect stocks to start crashing this quickly or this ferociously.
Normally, August is a fairly slow month in the financial world. As I have discussed previously, most of the really noteworthy stock market crashes throughout history have taken place during the months of September and October. So I thought that things wouldn’t start getting really crazy for another few weeks at least.
Financial markets tend to fall much faster than they go up, and I believe that we are moving into a time of extraordinary volatility. There will be huge down days, and there will also be huge up days. In fact, the three largest single day rallies in Dow history happened right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008. So don’t let what happens on any one particular day fool you.
No comments:
Post a Comment