Dow Hits 5 Year Low Thursday, Dips Under 8k in Early Trading Friday Morning

This has been the worst week for global equities since at least 1970. The Dow dropped 21 percent in just 10 trading days, and this week is likely to be one the worst weekly point drops in the history of the US stock market.

After a 679 point drop yesterday, the Dow actually dipped under 8000 for moment in early trading this morning, then bounced back up to around the closing price from yesterday. That swing was probably caused the computer-driven “buy” orders that kicked in when prices fell under the psychological 8k barrier.

At the start of today’s session, losses for the year totaled an insane $8.3 trillion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies representing almost all stocks traded in the U.S. A stream of selling forced exchanges in Austria, Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading, and those that remained opened were hammered. The rout in Australian markets caused traders there to call it “Black Friday.”

European stocks sank as well, with Britain’s FTSE-100 down 8.09 percent, German’s DAX down 9.4 percent, and France’s CAC-40 down 9.7 percent. In Asia, the collapse of Japan’s Yamato Life Insurance caused already nervous investors to pull even more money out of the market — the Nikkei 225 fell 9.6 percent.