Chart of the Day: Every Five Years or So

Today’s Chart of the Day, from an article written by Robin Powell with IFA.com, shows the 18 largest market events over the last 95 years. In addition to the interesting history lesson, a fascinating note is that we have an “event” about every five years. The idea of the chart is, "Yes, the market can go down, and the short-term changes can seem drastic," but don’t panic and “lock in your loss.”

For example, personally, the first of these events I remember was Black Monday, when the Dow Jones Industrial average went down 508 points, which was a 23% decline in one day. Oddly today, a few hundred-point swing in the Dow Jones is a daily occurrence. In the event of Black Monday, the Dow went back up 96% over the next 12 months, so panicking would have been a bad idea.