The Dow's percentage decline was its biggest since an 8% drop on Oct. 26, 1987. The biggest fall in point terms was a 777-point plunge 11 days ago.
In the last year, including Thursday, $8.3 trillion in U.S. stock market value has evaporated, according to Wilshire Associates. The Dow's yearlong slide is now steeper than its 38% drop during the dot-com bust of 2000-02.
No stock symbolized the market's state Thursday more than General Motors Corp. Shares of the country's largest automaker, long a mainstay of the economy, plummeted 31% to $4.76, their lowest level since the Korean War. Beset by falling sales and tightening credit, GM has seen its stock plunge 87% in the last year.
Even hopeful signs were washed away in Thursday's flood of selling. Oil futures, extending their recent slide, fell $2.36 to $86.59 a barrel, their lowest point in almost a year. Not too long ago, that would have cheered investors. Instead, they just trashed energy stocks, which were the second-biggest losers in the S&P 500 after financial stocks.
Indiscriminate selling can signal what analysts call capitulation, a wave of desperation selling that indicates the market is near a bottom.
"So many signs say we are getting to that ultimate capitulation," said David G. Dietze, chief investment strategist at Point View Financial Services in Summit, N.J. "But I thought that on Monday too."
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martin.zimmerman@latimes.com
maura.reynolds@latimes.com
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Zimmerman reported from Los Angeles, Reynolds from Washington. Times staff writers Marc Lifsher, Roger Vincent, Ken Bensinger and Tiffany Hsu contributed to this report.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Big bears
The worst bear markets for the Dow (By percentage loss in the Dow)
1929-32: -89%
1906-07: -49%
1937-38: -49%
1919-21: -47%
1901-03: -46%
1973-74: -45%
1916-17: -40%
1939-42: -40%
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Source: BBC
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Los Angeles Times
