Financial Market News Stock

Watching the financial news about stock markets around the world can sometimes teach you just as much about history and geography as the more traditional textbooks used to impart knowledge about those subject. Particularly if you relate that financial stock market news to current affairs.

For example, in 2008, when we saw a large drop in stock worth, although it was the biggest ever in terms of the volume of dollars, it did not break the Top 10 in relation to total shareholder value.

On September 29, 2008, after the House said no to the government's $700 billion bank bailout plan, the Dow slumped almost 778 points. This biggest single-day loss in history took away about $1.2 trillion in market value, which was the first time a loss had ever topped a trillion or more. This is according to Wilshire 5000, the largest and widest measure of the stock market.

However, back in 1987, what was known as the Black Monday stock market crash was way more devastating and severe. Overall there was a 22.6 percent drop in share worth in the Dow Jones on that one day, which worked out to about three times the drop of September 28, 2008, which was just a seven percent drop.

On Black Monday, which took place on October 19, the crash started out in Hong Kong, made its way west through various international time zones to Europe, and then got to the United Sates once other markets had gone down by a wide margin. Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or DIJA, fell by 508 points to 1738.74.

But even with this sharp and quick decline, the economy bounced back very fast, partly because policymakers were smart enough to allow firms that were failing to go bankrupt, thus freeing up their monetary resources for more soluble companies.

Even during the Great Depression, the majority of economic historians contend that the damage caused by the stock market crash in 1929 was not the only factor and was not enough all by itself to lead to such a major economic downturn. Instead, the Depression was as bad and long-lasting and serious as it was because of a big variety of government policies that failed. These issues began right after World War I.