Black October
This week's current decline of 20.8% ranks second as the worst Monday to Friday change for the Dow since 1900. As shown at right, the only week that saw a bigger decline ended on December 14, 1914. We've all heard of Black Monday when markets crashed in 1929 and 1987, but this is truly turning out to be Black October. It's now October 10th, and the market has declined 25% this month without a single up day. And it's not just confined to equities. The CRB commodities index is already down 13% this month, and the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index is down 10%. If it doesn't turn around soon, Black October will surely stick.
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Just FYI... although the iShares AGG ETF is -10% in price this month (9/30 close through today's intraday), the underlying index (LBUSTRUU [INDEX] on Bloomie) is only -0.89% as of yesterday's close. The ETF has been trading at an increasingly large discount to its published intraday NAV (the discount was last quoted at ~8%).
Posted by: Matt | October 10, 2008 at 12:48 PM
You may want to revise this article; we are now 50 DJI points from the worst EVER.
Posted by: Roger | October 10, 2008 at 01:49 PM
what has been the performance of the market a week, month, quarter after those historic weeks?
Posted by: cpugh | October 10, 2008 at 03:48 PM
Now, five tough days for the market and counting. Investors really need to make changes to their investing strategy if they have not already, especially since the market has not hit the bottom yet.. This means move money into T-bills and municipal bonds and invest some overseas to guard as a hedge against the coming inflation of the US dollar. I use offshore bank accounts for this and they have helped me. If you would like to learn more, feel free to visit my site.
Best,
Frank Miller
http://www.theoffshorebankaccount.com
Posted by: Frank Miller | October 10, 2008 at 05:49 PM
No, this week should be THE worst week in history. Remember the trading day on December 1914? The Dow retroactively re-adjusted the index price upto the day the market re-opened after the outbreak of WWI. The 24% drop on that week of 1914 is artificial created by record-keeper.
Posted by: falcon | October 11, 2008 at 01:59 AM
That would be a bingo for Mr. Falcon.
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/the-day-stocks-rose-but-the-dow-plunged-423/
Posted by: Climateer | October 12, 2008 at 06:05 PM