# Yikes!  Stock market in freefall!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [August 24, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719 "2015-08-24T13:42:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719/1 "2015-08-24T13:42:29Z")

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I opened my browser to check the news (at approx. 9:35 am, Eastern time zone), and the stock market was down 832 points! :eek:

Do. not. check. 401(k). today.

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**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719/2 "2015-08-24T13:45:53Z")

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And don’t panic right away either; unless you had planned on retiring Thursday. 🙂 I don’t know for sure but I don’t think this is close to a unique event historically.

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2015, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719/3 "2015-08-24T21:20:00Z")

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Looking much better now that it’s closed. Down, but hardly the stuff of jumping out of windows.

Just like most gains are made in 10 days per year, but it’s hard to know in advance which 10, most losses are made the same way.

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**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719/4 "2015-08-24T23:38:21Z")

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Well, it’s the [10th biggest point drop ever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average) (last Friday was #8) but only -3.12% percentage-wise, which doesn’t come anywhere near the top 20.

As for intraday points swing it’s the largest of all time, but again that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Interesting to note, before today, 9 of the top 10 largest point swings were during the late 2008 banking crisis (as well as 4 of the top 5 total point drops.)

It will be interesting to see where the market goes from here. Glad I’m not a stockbroker these days, though. (To paraphrase The American from _Chess_, “Thank God I’m only watching the game, enjoying it…”)

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**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yikes-stock-market-in-freefall/728719/5 "2015-08-25T00:51:07Z")

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I’m more worried about reports of Chinese troops ringing the NK border and those missing 50 NK subs that our intel somehow lost.  
Oh, and that HUGE ammo and spare parts dump explosion that happened in Sagamihara Japan the other day without any explanation.