Get 40% Off
🤯 This Tech Portfolio is up 29% YTD! Join Now to Get April’s Top PicksGet The Picks – Just 99 USD

Why Monday’s Mayhem Was No Surprise

Published 08/30/2015, 03:03 AM
Updated 05/14/2017, 06:45 AM

Major Dow Losses Since 1965 - 3 Percent or Greater chart

After a week of steady declines, investors woke up Monday morning to a huge sell-off as both the S&P 500 and Dow dropped hugely in the early minutes of trading.

The Dow plummeted nearly 4% before seeing its largest intraday point swing ever. The spread between the high and low of the day? An astonishing 1,089 points.

On the heels of this historic market activity, today’s chart looks at the Dow’s largest percentage losses - and the months when they were most common. This bird’s-eye view of market volatility should help us form realistic expectations for the coming months.

To create our chart, we took historical price data for the Dow going back to 1965. We then filtered the data for daily percentage losses of 3% or higher.

As you can see, the largest percentage losses in the market tend to occur between August and November. Of the 20 largest losses in the past 50 years, eight occurred in the month of October.

In his most recent article, Emerging Trends Strategist Matthew Carr noted that of the 20 largest point losses in market history, six were during the month of August.

In other words, big losses this time of year are nothing new for the market. But there is good news...

Six months after these large single-day losses, the market is typically up 5% on average - which means the volatile days and weeks ahead could actually be good for your portfolio. According to Matthew, “now is the time you should be hunting for opportunities, zeroing in on those companies that are oversold.”

If nothing else, investors should take comfort in knowing that there’s some predictability to all this market madness.

One final note...

In pulling together the data for this week’s chart, I stumbled upon another interesting monthly trend. It’s really quite surprising. In fact, it may just change your investment outlook for the rest of 2015.

Stay tuned. I’ll share that with you next week.

Latest comments

Risk Disclosure: Trading in financial instruments and/or cryptocurrencies involves high risks including the risk of losing some, or all, of your investment amount, and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices of cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and may be affected by external factors such as financial, regulatory or political events. Trading on margin increases the financial risks.
Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
It is prohibited to use, store, reproduce, display, modify, transmit or distribute the data contained in this website without the explicit prior written permission of Fusion Media and/or the data provider. All intellectual property rights are reserved by the providers and/or the exchange providing the data contained in this website.
Fusion Media may be compensated by the advertisers that appear on the website, based on your interaction with the advertisements or advertisers.
© 2007-2024 - Fusion Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.