The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its eighth-worst daily point loss in history Monday, dropping about 589 points.
Aug. 21, last Friday, was also a historically large loss. The 531-point drop that day was ninth-worst at the time, now falling to 10th after Monday’s even larger drop.
The largest point loss in history was on September 29, 2008, when the market dropped 778 points in one day. Only one of the 10 worst daily losses occurred before 2000.
While a 586-point loss is awful, it would be more revealing to compare historical daily losses by the percentage of the market lost. By this standard, Monday’s drop of 3.6 percent isn’t so bad, historically speaking.
The worst percentage loss in history came on Oct. 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 22.6 percent. The 20th-worst drop came on Sept. 29, 2008, when the market dropped by 7 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Monday’s 3.6 percent drop is well underneath the threshold required to break the 20 worst days in market history. To have dropped 7 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have had to drop more than 1,150 points Monday.
