The biggest market sell offs in history

1. Black Tuesday October 29^th 1929

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted by 11% and 16 million shares were traded on one day. That was a record in itself. It took until 1954 for the average to get back to the pre-crash figure. There was a knock-on effect even back then and Canada lost 50% of its value in shares.

2. Black Monday October 19^th 1987

Bad news issued on October 14^th in the US triggered the stock crash in 1987. The Dow lost 100 points on October 16^th and then a further 500 on the 19^th. By the time October came to a close, there was a drop in the US of 22.68%. The UK fared even worse with a drop of 26.45%. Hong Kong did worst of all with a loss of 45.5%

3. Mini Crash October 27 1997

This time it was in Asia and international-currency speculation trouble. The Dow declined and triggered a drop in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil (13-15%). European suffered from the knock-on effect and plunged too.

4. September11th 2001

No need to say why and what happened on this fateful day. People bought into traditional safe buys like gold and bonds and fled everything else as global markets took a battering. Oil prices shot through the roof. Tokyo dropped to a 17-year all-time low. European indexes dropped to pre-1998 levels, with the FTSE 100 losing 5.7% with a loss of $98 billion.

5. China February 27^th 2007

The Dow Jones lost 416 points in one day and fell 3.3%. Chinese stocks fell like a tonne of bricks and US manufacturing statistics aided and abetted that even more.  The FTSE fell 1.85%. Chinese stock lost $140 billion in value.

6. September 29^th 2008

The House of Representatives’ failure to bail-out the toxic-mortgage assets of banks ($700 billion) sent markets into turmoil. The Dow lost 429 points (in just 5 minutes flat!).

7. Flash Crash May 6^th 2010

The Dow Jones plummeted by 1, 000 points in half an hour. The Nasdaq had to cancel all trade that day s the drop was too big to deal with.

Looking back, it seems like most crashes have taken place in September or October. But, the worst day of the year is officially called ‘Blue Monday’. It is calculated every year and the next one is on January 20^th 2014…so maybe! It was calculated by Dr. Cliff Arnall at Cardiff University, based upon weather conditions, lack of sunshine, debt level (after Christmas) and time elapsed because of failed New Year resolutions, amongst other things.