Coronavirus may not have reached our shores, but US markets have plunged in panicky selling this week as investors contemplate its’ impacts on a variety of industries and global trading partners. The stocks in the S&P 500 — the 500 largest public companies in the country — lost $810 billion in value yesterday after a $1.3 trillion loss on Monday for a total two-day loss of $2.1 trillion or 6.3%.
It’s bad.
But, it’s not that bad, at least when you look at other market swoons. There have been 10 two-day declines of more than 6% since 2008. Six of them were more than the combined loss from Monday and Tuesday.
- For the Wednesday and Thursday ended November 20, 2008, the S&P stocks dropped 12.4% as the breadth and depth of the global recession came into full view.
- The Dow fell 680 points or 8.1% on the two days ending December 1, 2008 as sentiment soured further.
- For the two days ended August 8, 2011, S&P 500 stocks fell 6.7% after credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s Corporation downgraded the rating for United States’ sovereign debt from AAA, or “risk free”, to AA+.
- The most recent comparable one day drop since Monday was February 8, 2018 when fears about the bond market, inflation and interest rates seized investors and stocks fell 3.75%.
Hopefully, we won’t be reporting on the worst three day declines on Thursday.
Next up: How coronavirus fears are seeping into pharma, e-commerce, consumer electronics as well as other industries.
Source:
Chinese percent of World GDP Growth https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/these-countries-are-leading-the-way-on-growth
