4 Years Ago Today: Dow Drops 777; Largest Drop Ever

Four years ago, this was the point in John McCain's campaign that the writing was on the wall. Given his comments on the economy, the massive nosedive of the stock market just didn't fit with his narrative, and he kept making it worse. But on the day this happened, I wasn't really putting it in that context. I was just blown away by the spectacle. So much so that I used a fairly bad graphic--but then, it was from the source, so I guess they did too? It should have been a jagged stab downward. . .

ORIGINAL POST: September 29, 2008

It's admittedly hard to write this blog, when the biggest stories of the day are in an area I simply cannot speak authoritatively about. I've written a few times already, that I just don't get Wall Street, and all that it entails. And I'd be a bad broker if I did understand it, because the roller coaster ride of the Dow Jones Industrial Average gives me heartburn anyway.

Image from source, AOL News

Today's stock market ride was kind of like watching someone spike your bid on eBay. After seemingly being headed back up after a dive, at about one minute until closing bell, the bottom dropped out. I have a stock ticker on my desktop, and when refreshing it every 20 or 30 seconds, it went down each time. And after 1:00 pm Pacific time, it still kept dropping, from the six hundreds to the low seven hundreds, all the way down to minus 777. That's a lot, right? And how does it keep dropping after the market has supposedly closed? Maybe I don't want to know how all of this works.

Oh, and the headline below is rounding to the nearest fraction, but 777 is the number being used most.

[Excerpt]

Bailout Vote Sacks Dow by Record 778
The failure of the bailout package in Congress triggered a historic selloff on Wall Street - including a terrifying decline of nearly 500 points in mere minutes as the vote took place, the closest thing to panic the stock market has seen in years. . .

Read more at: AOL News

More on the Skittish Stock Market

Happy Friday! Did you become an instant-then-revoked millionaire yesterday? Sheesh, glad I've got mostly little dinky, crappy stocks.  Anyway, Friday is going to be busyish for me. I have my first maintenance check-up on the new car. I found out that my "free" oil change that I fought for when buying the car expired after 30 days! NICE!  Let's see if my "bumper-to-bumper" warranty really only includes the bumpers!

After that, I'm off to see A Nightmare on Elm Street with my friend, Stupid Monkey Planet. I'll be back later with a review. In the meantime, here's a little more on yesterday's stock market free-fall.

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Moment of EEK! Rachel Maddow Explains What Happened on Wall Street

In what must be lesson #507 of "why I love The Rachel Maddow Show", here is a unique perspective on the scary, nearly 1000-point drop on Wall Street yesterday. I didn't see anyone else put it quite like this. Sotheby's stock at $100,000 per share? Sam Adams beer company at $0? It's stuff like this that keeps me tuning in.

But, man, wouldn't you be ticked if you bought 10,000 shares of P&G at the bottom, and had your stock buy get rescinded?

Stock Market Drops Nearly 1000 Points, Rebounds (But Not All the Way)

I'm a small-time dabbler in the stock market, so while at work, I have a small stock ticker running on my screen. I glance at it from time to time, and don't get very alarmed at 150+ point sways. . .the market has been way crazy for a long time now.  On Thursday afternoon, they went full-bore insane, and it happened so quickly I missed it. And I'm glad I did, because if I'd seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge almost 1000 points in just a few short minutes, I doubt I'd have been able to eat lunch.

Whatever happened--a fumble-fingered stock broker typing billion instead of million?--it raises a huge flag. How the hell are we that close to the edge?  Obviously, some kind of mistake occurred, whether it was that broker or something else. But that mistake rocked the financial world, and will probably have lasting effects. I mean how would you like it if you bought a few thousand shares when they hit rock-bottom, made out like a bandit, and then they took it away from you?

[Excerpt]

US stock plunge raises alarm on algo trading

A spine-chilling slide of nearly 1,000 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its biggest intraday points drop ever, led to heightened calls for a crackdown on computer-driven high-frequency trading.

The slide, which in one 10-minute stretch knocked the index down nearly 700 points, may have been triggered by a trading error. Major stock indexes eventually recovered from their 9 percent drops to close down a little more than 3 percent. . .

Read more at: Reuters

Dow Drops 777 Points; Largest Point Drop in History

Image from source, AOL News

It's admittedly hard to write this blog, when the biggest stories of the day are in an area I simply cannot speak authoritatively about. I've written a few times already, that I just don't get Wall Street, and all that it entails. And I'd be a bad broker if I did understand it, because the roller coaster ride of the Dow Jones Industrial Average gives me heartburn anyway.

Today's stock market ride was kind of like watching someone spike your bid on eBay. After seemingly being headed back up after a dive, at about one minute until closing bell, the bottom dropped out. I have a stock ticker on my desktop, and when refreshing it every 20 or 30 seconds, it went down each time. And after 1:00 pm Pacific time, it still kept dropping, from the six hundreds to the low seven hundreds, all the way down to minus 777. That's a lot, right? And how does it keep dropping after the market has supposedly closed? Maybe I don't want to know how all of this works.

Oh, and the headline below is rounding to the nearest fraction, but 777 is the number being used most.

[Excerpt]

Bailout Vote Sacks Dow by Record 778

The failure of the bailout package in Congress triggered a historic selloff on Wall Street - including a terrifying decline of nearly 500 points in mere minutes as the vote took place, the closest thing to panic the stock market has seen in years. . .

Read more at: AOL News