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Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

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Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#11
To put it into perspective, the last time the market behaved like (multiple drops of this magnitude) this was 90 years ago, in 1929, and it was at the start of the Great Depression. Today was the second largest percentage drop for US Markets in history.

Now is not a good time to sell your stock holdings (at least not anymore). This smells of a panic right now.

I think a severe recession is all but guaranteed at this point. Let's hope we get through this with no more than that.

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#12
post #2

This probably isn't the bottom. Wait a little while longer and when things start picking back up, dump in as much as you can afford.

I don’t think it’s possible to tell the difference between volatility and things picking back up. Somebody trying to follow this advice might have bought on Friday when the market went up.

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#14

I'm quite surprised by this because it was my understanding that companies were doing us a favor by employing most people. That they were forestalling replacing us with robots by paying us near subsistence wages. I'm very confused. On the one hand I have all the things I've been reading in the papers about workers being superfluous. But yet on the other hand when I just look at the evidence, it seems like companies r…

Consumer spending is kind of the foundation of the economy, and as of today in the US it's about to go into freefall. Especially services.

This fall is pricing in the inevitable waves of bankruptcies in the service industry.

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#16
post #7

Worst drop ever for the Nasdaq Index today: -12%. These aren't 1, 2 or 3 standard-deviation events... these are more like 6 or 7 standard-deviations from the mean...

That's not so impossible for the stock market whose distribution has a big, long negative tail. (If you plot the daily delta of the logarithm of the S&P you will see that it looks like a normal distribution, except with a fat long tail of very bad days.) It goes up little by little except on the days it goes down by a lot.

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#17

I'm quite surprised by this because it was my understanding that companies were doing us a favor by employing most people. That they were forestalling replacing us with robots by paying us near subsistence wages. I'm very confused. On the one hand I have all the things I've been reading in the papers about workers being superfluous. But yet on the other hand when I just look at the evidence, it seems like companies r…

People lose business and need cash to get through the crisis.

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#19
post #15
post #2

This probably isn't the bottom. Wait a little while longer and when things start picking back up, dump in as much as you can afford.

Worst advice ever. Do not try to buy the dip in this market. Most likely it will lead to loosing money.

You only lose money if you sell :-)

Re: Dow Falls 2997 points worst drop since 1987 crash

#20
PSA: The Dow Jones industrial average is a terrible measure of the stock market. It tracks just 30 stocks, some which have an outsized influence on the measure.

This is not to say the stock market is not in freefall, but there are much better indexes to track general market movement.

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