I remember about 15 years ago that a 300 point drop was a catastrophy. Now I see 666 and say, meh.
Yes, it’s the percentages we need to look at. Raw numbers don’t mean much. “Dow down triple digits!!” So what?
The media game when it comes to reporting stock market performance: downplay day to day movement by citing percentage. Hype it by citing points.
Some perspective.
In October of 1987 the Dow Jones Industrial averages good morning sat at about 2300, are the markets closed at 3 p.m. that day the djia Lost 508 points. That represented 23% of the DOW.
This past Friday the Dow began the day at about 26,000, when the day was over it had lost 665 points. That represented a loss of about 2.3 %. Had the Dow on that day lost proportionately the same amount as it did in October of 1987 the sell-off would have amounted to about 6,000 points, or fully 10X more than what we saw.
The fundamentals for a strong economy and therefore a strong market are in place. The markets move on earnings, not political infighting in the swamp.