Trading on the Austrian market has been halted.

Hang Seng has closed -1146.37 at -7.19%.

Can someone point me to an article/etc that can define what a 10% or even a 1% drop in the DOW translates to in the daily lives of US citizens? How does each percentage drop manifest itself in losses to the American people?

for what it's worth:

The Japanese injected $45 Billion dollars into the system today to keep it from unraveling even more than it did. That's the single largest one day injection of cash to the markets, ever.

Dow opens soon. Should be an interesting night.

It's hard to measure something like that, KOGDOG.
The biggest and most immediate effect is usually in one's 401(k) or other retirement account with investments in the stock market. Most retirement accounts are at least partially based on stocks, so a 10% loss could mean a 1% loss in portfolio value, a 5% loss, or a 10% loss. It could be more depending on how that portfolio is invested. I've heard from more than a few people that their retirement accounts have lost anywhere from 20-50% of their value. This is a huge deal to people nearing retirement age; if they had $1million in their retirement account, they may have suddenly found themselves with $600k just a year or two from their planned retirement.

Market drops can also affect employment. If you work for let's say Ford Motors, their recent precipitous losses in stock value may well result in layoffs. Or you may work for a local metal shop - if you buy metal from Alcoa to work on, their recent loss of value in stock may result in higher prices charged on that metal, which would result in lower profit for the metal shop, which could then result in ... you guessed it, layoffs.

In normal market fluctuations, the average American, someone who doesn't play the stock market and who has plenty of years until retirement, a market loss won't have tremendous effect. This, however, is an extreme market fluctuation, and the results that are now and will continue to be affecting "Main Street" are only partially based on Wall Street.

This is a sell off. People are taking their money out of the markets. If you stay in while others sell then your investments go down. This obviously leads to even more people getting out. People are getting their 401k retirements out of the market before it loses 50% of its value or more. Last one out's a rotten egg.

When all this began (the drops in the Dow) I expected a crash in the market one day soon like 1929. but now it looks like more of an attrition over several weeks. You know -250 points here, -600 there, until the bottom of like 5000 is in.

So where is the bottom? What's everyone's guess? I'll take a stab at 5000 that is where it was in the mid to late 90's when the tech bubble started big. The economy never really got to correct its self back then because it was pumped up by the housing bubble. Now no more bubbles so I say it goes back to 5000. Where's the bottom?

edit: futures down -269 @ 8:45am ET - not looking good.

edit: futures down -414 @ 9:14am ET


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Dow down 10% in first few mins!

edit: Yahoo screwed up! it was not 10%!

[edit on 10-10-2008 by 2 cents]