Infographic: Black Monday Among The Worst 21st Century Crashes

After a horrible couple of weeks for stock markets in the United States and internationally, things went from bad to worse on Monday when a crashing oil price added to growing fears of a global economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

After all three major stock market indices had opened Monday’s session with steep losses, trading even had to be halted for 15 minutes to avoid further damage. In the end, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite Index and the S&P 500 each closed the day with losses in excess of seven percent, making sure March 10, 2020 will go down in history as one of the worst crashes of the (still early) 21st century.

In terms of points shed, “Black Monday” even marked the worst day ever for the Dow Jones Industrial Index, but that doesn’t come as a huge surprise considering that the index briefly flirted with 30,000 points as recently as one months ago, compared to a peak of around 14,000 points prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

In terms of percentage losses, Monday’s crash marked the 11th largest single-day drop in the index’ 120-year history and the second largest since the turn of the millennium. As our chart shows, yesterday’s losses were only exceeded on October 15, 2008, when the release of weak economic data was enough to trigger a major sell-off at the peak of the financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, the first trading day after 9/11 is also among the worst days of the 21st century for U.S. stock markets. Back then, the Dow lost 7.13 percent after stock exchanges had remained closed for three days following the attacks.