Mr. Market's Wild Ride

Frightful Friday lived up to expectations, giving the wildest and most frightening ride on the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever. No doubt more than a few people lost their lunch. Some, most likely, much more.

DJ TAKING STOCK: Putting Dow's Record 1000-Pt Swing In Context
By Tomi Kilgore A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN

To put some historical perspective on how violent the swing was in the Dow Jones Industrials Average's record intraday moves Friday, what took eight months a decade ago took only 6 hours on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrials Average hit a low of 7882.51 -- a 696.68-point loss -- a few minutes after the open. About six hours later, the Dow was up as much as 322.09 points, at a high of 8901.28.

About a half-hour after reaching its high, the Dow closed down 128 points at 8451.19.

The intraday range of 1018.77 points was the widest in history.

Just a year ago, the Dow hit its all-time high close of 14,164.53. In the last 12 months, the index lost 40.3 percent of its value.

And, to put this is a bigger context, and an Australian one, (see Barry Ritholtz for the US one) the market action has reached a 61.8 Fibonacci retracement of the mighty dot.commodity boom from 2003's low to 2007's all time high, as seen in this proxy action of the ASX/S&P200 Share Price Future Contract in the chart below.

The Average True Range is in territory often coincident with bottom reversals. Caveat Emptor.