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The Ten Worst Days in S&P History
By JLP | February 21, 2008
The other day when I was working on my posts about investing on the wrong day, I looked for information on the 10 worst days in the S&P’s history. I couldn’t find the information I was looking for so I sent an email to Standard & Poor’s and asked them. They were very helpful and sent me the 15 worst days in the S&P Index’s history:
Notice that with exception of 1946, all of the bad days are clustered in the 20s, 30′s and 1987. It’s also important to note that the S&P 500 Index didn’t become the S&P 500 Index until 1957 when it went from 90 stocks to 500 stocks. I wonder if the numbers from the 20s and 30s would have been any different had the index consisted of 500 stocks.
Anyway, by far the worst day was October 19, 1987, which I talked about earlier this week. All the other worst days pale in comparison to the 20.47% loss on October 19, 1987.
Topics: Investing | 5 Comments »
February 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
When it’s down, it’s a great time to buy!
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
One statistic I’d find interesting is the period of time it took the market to recover its value after each crash/bear market. I think this is what is important. If you lost 50% of your savings in 1987, it doesn’t help you much if the market starts going up in less than a year. What you want to know is when I’ll come out ahead. E.g. if your retirement is 5 years after the crash, are you OK; what about 10 years after the crash. If I am not mistaken, it didn’t take long to recover from 1987 crash, but I think it took until the Second World War to recover from 1929 crash.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
The S&P was created in 1957, so what are these numbers?
And yes after the 1929 crash it took the DOW til 1954 to break even again
October 7th, 2008 at 11:01 am
What was the highest closing for S&P??
I’m assuming it was Oct. 2007…but what was the closing number??
October 7th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
From Wikipedia:
Highest close 1,565.15 October 9, 2007.