Bear market panic fuels epic sell-off

 
By The Associated Press | Published: October 10, 2008    Comment on this article Leave a comment

NEW YORK — A runaway train of a sell-off turned the anniversary of the stock market peak into one of the worst days in Wall Street history Thursday, driving the Dow Jones industrials down a breathtaking 679 points and deepening a financial crisis that has defied all efforts to stop it.

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Stocks lost more than 7 percent, $872 billion of investments evaporated, and the Dow fell to 8,579. When the average crashed through the 9,000 level for the first time in five years in the final hour of trading, sellers had only begun to hit the gas pedal.

A record losing streak
As bad as the day was, even worse was the cumulative effect of a historic run of declines: The Dow suffered a triple-digit loss for the sixth day in a row, a first, and the average dropped for the seventh day in a row, a losing streak not seen since 2002.

"Right now the market is just panicked,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. "Nobody wants to take on any risk. Everybody just wants to get their money and put it under the mattress.”

It all took place one year to the day after the Dow closed at its record high of 14,164.

Since that day, frozen credit, record foreclosures, cascading job losses and outright fear have seized the market and sapped 39 percent of its value.

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