The stock market finished off its wildest week in years with another day of huge swings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell Friday by as much as 500 points before violently swinging upwards to a 140 point gain, a 640 point swing over the course of less than an hour. Then, it gave up about half of those gains, only to sharply rally again in the last hour. At its height, the Dow around 500 points into positive territory, a thousand points up from its low.
Despite cooling off in the final half-hour of trading, the end result was a happy one for stock market investors. The Dow ended up 330 points, or about 1.38 percent. The broader S&P 500 was up 1.49 percent. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.44 percent.
It has been the worst week since January 2016. But that is better than it looked at the lows of the day, when the market was on track for its worst week since the financial crisis. The Dow fell by more than 1,000 points on both Monday and Thursday. Those were the first 1,000 point losses ever in the Dow, although as a percentage neither decline was particularly steep on a historical basis. Thursday’s losses in the S&P 500 put the market into “correction” territory, meaning stocks had fallen 10 percent from their January 26th high.
For the week, the Dow is down by about 5.2 percent. According to CNBC, the Dow has moved 20,000 points up and down over the course of the week, covering a trading range of 2,000 points.
Investors are using phrases such as “shell-shocked” and “seasick” to describe the experience of the return of volatility.