Quote of the Day
“Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics, the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators today differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature.”
-Edwin Lefevre, in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
December 8th – This Day in Stock Market History
1941 – U.S. stock markets trade for the first day since the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 3.5% on the day that the U.S. formally declares war on Japan.
Source: The Market’s Measure
New York Times cover on U.S. declaring war on Japan December 8th, 1941
U.S. stock markets would continue to decline for 5 months as the U.S. enters World War 2.
Chart from Macrotrends
1991 – Soviet Union officially dissolves as Ukraine, Byelorussia (Belarus) and Russia become “Commonwealth of Independent States”. The next day when U.S. stocks traded, U.S. markets fell about 0.5%. Markets had rallied the last month as traders speculated that the Soviet Union would soon fall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 9.47% in the month of December, and was up 20.32% for the year.
Best December 8th in Dow Jones Industrial Average History
2008 – Up 3.46%, 298.76 points.
Worst December 8th in Dow Jones Industrial Average History
1928 – Down 5.06%, 13.72 points.
