The Dow Has Lost 12% In A Volatile Month

Avie Schneider

March 31, 2020 / 7:58 am

caption: Trading ends for the day on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on March 20. It was the last day before the exchange switched to all-electronic trading in an effort to help contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The stock market has never seen a month like March. The Dow notched losses and gains of 1,000 points to as many as 3,000 points in a day in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic and its economic toll.

The Dow Jones Industrial average has recovered from recent lows, but it's still down nearly 12% this month.

And the blue chip index is 24% below its recent peak in February. At its low on March 23, it was down a staggering 38% from the record high.

On Tuesday morning, the Dow was up 100 points, or about 0.5%. The S&P 500 inched up 0.3% and the Nasdaq gained more than 1%.

The stock market has whipsawed throughout the month, making unheard-of moves in just a matter of hours and days. The volatility triggered several automatic, temporary trading halts on the the New York Stock Exchange.

On March 16, the Dow lost a staggering 2,997 points — the most for a single day. That 13% drop was the steepest since the Black Monday crash of October 1987.

But the market saw dramatic ups, too.

The Dow soared 2,112 points March 24, breaking a single-day record that had been set just 11 days earlier on Friday the 13th. The index gained nearly 11.4% on March 24 — the most since 1933. [Copyright 2020 NPR]