Another Look at the Crash
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

The U.S. equity markets hit their highs on Oct 9, 2007.  For example, the Dow Jones closed at a record 14164 and the S&P 500 hit 1565.

I keep my own data for the close each Friday and in ’07 that happened to be Oct. 12.  There was little variation between Oct. 9 and Oct. 12 so following are some key global equity benchmarks that illustrate the carnage of the past 13 months.

I have been jotting down various market figures on ledger sheets since March 1990, from which I picked up all the above, and one of the indicators I keep track of is steel production, which at one time PIMCO’s Bill Gross said was his favorite economic barometer.  [That was years ago.  I’m assuming it’s something different these days for him.]

Ordinarily, I just mindlessly jot down the steel number out of habit, getting it from Barron’s, but I couldn’t help but note the precipitous decline in steel between 8/22/08 and 11/14/08….2,167 to 1,536 (thous. tons).  [The posted figure represents about a two-week lag from actual results.]

I went back through my 18 years of data and didn’t see anything like this recent decline before; as good an illustration of how quickly our economy is falling off a cliff as any, and it certainly doesn’t bode well for the fourth quarter GDP number when it’s released early next year.  Current estimates are that the contraction could be in the 3% to 5% range, after a revised third quarter figure of -0.5%.

Wall Street History returns next week.