Top ten Dow one-day drops and subsequent returns
Posted on: September 30, 2008
President Bush: “This sucker is going down!”
Today the Dow dropped 777 or 6.98%, making it the largest one-day point drop in history.
The ten largest one-day point drops in history of the Dow (before this one) are recorded in the table below, with subsequent one year returns calculated.
| rank | date | close | drop | % drop | 1 yr later | 1 yr return |
| 1 | 9/17/2001 | 8920.7 | -684.81 | -7.13% | 8380.18 | -6.06% |
| 2 | 4/14/2000 | 10305.77 | -617.78 | -5.66% | 10126.94 | -1.74% |
| 3 | 10/27/1997 | 7161.15 | -554.26 | -7.18% | 8432.21 | 17.75% |
| 4 | 8/31/1998 | 7539.07 | -512.61 | -6.37% | 10914.13 | 44.77% |
| 5 | 10/19/1987 | 1738.74 | -508 | -22.6% | 2137.27 | 22.92% |
| 6 | 9/15/2008 | 10917.51 | -504.48 | -4.42% | TBD | TBD |
| 7 | 9/17/2008 | 10609.66 | -449.36 | -4.06% | TBD | TBD |
| 8 | 3/12/2001 | 10208.25 | -436.37 | -4.10% | 10632.35 | 4.15% |
| 9 | 2/27/2007 | 12216.24 | -416.02 | -3.29% | 12684.92 | 3.84% |
| 10 | 7/19/2002 | 8019.26 | -390.23 | -4.64% | 9188.15 | 14.58% |
Data source: Yahoo Finance
History seems to suggest guarded optimism but I will let you decide if history is any guide for the situation today. We don’t know what the future will bring, but if we have a globablly diversified all-weather portfolio, we will be fine.
The Investment Scientist 
Leave a Reply