Wall Street on Wednesday closed out its worst year in more than seven decades, battered by a devastating credit crunch that smashed investor and consumer confidence and fueled fears of another Great Depression.
The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 34% for the year -- the steepest drop since the blue-chip index crashed 53% in 1931, the second full year of the Depression.
Many broader market indexes lost more than the Dow did in 2008 as nearly $7 trillion of the country's stock-market wealth was wiped out.
Despite widespread belief among experts that the U.S. isn't on the verge of a 1930s-like economic collapse, the mammoth market loss taunts the optimists. And it has left many individual investors understandably wary.
Rodney Punt, a 63-year-old Santa Monica retiree who has less than 20% of his investment portfolio in stocks, expresses interest in buying beaten-down shares as the new year begins, but isn't yet sure about risking his money.
"There is still a downward spiral in the real economy," he said. "Is it a recession? Is it a depression?"
As Punt tries to gauge the depths of the economy's woes, what he and other investors decide to do with their money in 2009 could foretell the return of growth: Typically, stocks begin to rally four to seven months before the end of a recession, as investors anticipate a recovery in corporate earnings.
With the current recession already a year old, most economists expect a turnaround in the second half of 2009. If the market follows the usual script, stocks should show a significant pickup beginning in the first quarter of the new year.
A rising market could be a confidence builder for the economy, including for corporate executives who are wrestling with how many more jobs to pare as they cope with sinking sales.
Paul Hickey, a partner at Bespoke Investment Group in Harrison, N.Y., noted that stocks have a track record of rebounding in the year after a harrowing sell-off.
The Dow's 10 worst yearly losses since 1896 were followed by rallies the next year in eight of those instances.
The glaring exceptions: 1930 and 1931.
Some investment professionals caution against putting too much faith in historical trends. This recession has been different from most, rooted in the bursting of the housing bubble and magnified by a credit crunch unlike anything the world has experienced in modern times.
Paul Desmond, president of Lowry Research Corp., a stock-research firm in North Palm Beach, Fla., says predictions about the economy and the market should be taken with more than the usual dose of salt -- given that almost no one foresaw the severity of what transpired in 2008.
"What makes you think their projections for 2009 are going to be any better?" he asked.
Investors know too well how we got here: What began as a U.S. housing market crash two years ago spread like a wildfire through the global financial system in 2008, as losses on mortgage-related securities toppled pillars of the banking industry and caused survivors to simply stop lending.
For the economy, already weakened by soaring energy prices in the first half of the year, the shutdown of the debt markets in the second half was a body blow that caused many consumers and businesses to halt spending. As the economy fell off a cliff beginning in September, stock markets worldwide went too -- taking countless nest eggs with them.
The average U.S. stock mutual fund lost 38% for the year; the average foreign stock fund lost 46%.
In recent weeks, however, many world stock markets have stabilized and moved modestly higher. The Dow, which closed at 8,776.39 on Wednesday, is up 16% from its five-year low reached Nov. 20.
The now well-hewn argument against the risk of economic catastrophe on the scale of the early 1930s is that the federal government, and the Federal Reserve, have thrown trillions of dollars into the fight to bolster the financial system, get credit flowing again and revive confidence.
President-elect Barack Obama has promised to add a huge fiscal stimulus program.
Large-scale government intervention was missing as the Depression unfolded in the '30s, until President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933.
As things worsened, the stock market fell for four straight years from 1929 through 1932, for a total loss of 89% on the Dow from peak to trough.
This time, the Dow's decline from its all-time high reached in October 2007 is a far more modest 38% -- so far.
Yet many stocks are at or near their lowest levels in a decade or more, and are selling at low prices relative to per-share earnings.
Optimists believe that long-term investors won't be able to resist depressed stocks in the new year, particularly with so much cash sitting in short-term accounts paying virtually no interest.
The panic selling of the last few months "has created massive sidelined buying power," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis.
