Here’s food for thought: the daily DJIA index update — a laundry list of Dow stats that are e-mailed to me daily. Pay close attention to the first number. Up 11 percent. That feels good, doesn’t it? See, the market goes down and then it goes up.

Next, you’ll notice that the Dow makes history and breaks records all the time, which media types like myself never fail to point out. Today we experienced the biggest one-day percentage gain since 1933.That sounds pretty good too, doesn’t it?

Finally, so you don’t accuse me of being a Polyanna, yes,  the market is still down a lot, and has a long way to go to recover (see the last half dozen bullet points).

As of October 13, 2008

• The DJIA, up 936.42 points, or 11.08%, to close at 9387.61.

• Snaps a string of eight straight losing days.

• Biggest one-day closing point gain ever.

• Biggest one-day percentage gain since March 15, 1933.

• 5th largest percent gain in the DJIA’s history.

• Intraday, the DJIA hit a high of 9427.99, up 976.80 points, or 12%.

• At its intraday low, the DJIA dipped to 8462.18.

• On an intraday basis at today’s high, the DJIA posted its biggest intraday point and percentage gain since 1995 (as far back as our database is populated — prior to that, theoretical highs and lows were used). A theoretical high is the high the DJIA would have hit if every single component hit its high at the same time. The theoretical high can differ greatly from the actual high which is why they are not comparable.

• It has dropped 4776.92 points, or 33.72%, from its record close of 14164.53, hit on October 9, 2007.

• It has dropped -28.11% from its 2008 close high of 13058.20, hit on May 2.

• Month-to-date, the DJIA is down -13.48%. In September, it closed down 6.00%.

• Year-to-date, it is down -29.23%.

• Down 33% from a year-ago-today.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under stock market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.