In the Wake of Coronavirus, Should You Be Buying or Selling Stocks Right Now?
2020 started out as a relatively boring year, so far as the stock market goes. Seven weeks in, the market hadn't been particularly volatile, and just past the midpoint of February, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials were up 5.1% and 3.2% respectively. Nothing to write home about, but well on track to finish the year solidly up after a strong 2019.
Things changed on Feb. 20, though nobody knew it at the time. Both the the S&P and Dow dropped, but only a modest 0.4% for both indexes, starting one of the most volatile periods in the past decade. In the 13 trading days since, the market has experienced the quickest double-digit decline in market history, falling more than 3% four times, and for two days it was up more than 4%.
Just how volatile has it been? Any one of those four bad days would qualify as the worst day for stocks not just in 2020, but for all of last year, and the market hasn't come close to a day it gained more than 4% in a day in more than a year. But it happened twice this week. Yet even after two of the best market days in the past decade, the market is still down more than 8% to date, with far more very bad days than very good ones.
Source Fool.com
