DOW Jones Blog
The DOW Jones Industrial Average has illustrated the biggest losses it has faced since the Great Recession of 2008-2009. This is interesting as it is primarily a result of measures deemed mandatory by governments across the globe as social distancing and quarantining has resulted in the decrease of buying and selling goods in most physical stores, and as online stores (such as Amazon and eBay) have taken measures to ensure the safest standards and practice are put in place to prevent unnecessary spreading of COVID-19 to customers and others associated with the company.
I was originally going to utilize the method of regression, or finding a function that best fits a group of data on a Cartesian (x-y) plane, but I quickly realized that this would have been more complex than I initially realized. Nevertheless, we can still analyze this with simpler mathematics.
Basically, if we take the peak value of the DOW Jones immediately before the Great Recession (on September 28, 2007) of 13,895.63 and the lowest value of 7,223.98 on March 13, 2009, we can see a 48% decrease between these two values. If we take the relative maximum of our current situation (Valentines Day of this year, a value of 29,398.08) and the lowest value due to the coronavirus pandemic (19,173.98 on March 20) we can see a roughly 35% decrease. However, this occurred over the span of slightly over one month whereas during the great recession the decrease to the minimum occurred over almost eighteen months. This is some nice data to illustrate the severity of a pandemic and the possibility of severe shutdown, and how extreme health crises can lead to economic collapse and the slowing/halting of development at a greater level than a "normal" recession (i.e. one that is not due to extreme health crises).
I was originally going to utilize the method of regression, or finding a function that best fits a group of data on a Cartesian (x-y) plane, but I quickly realized that this would have been more complex than I initially realized. Nevertheless, we can still analyze this with simpler mathematics.
Basically, if we take the peak value of the DOW Jones immediately before the Great Recession (on September 28, 2007) of 13,895.63 and the lowest value of 7,223.98 on March 13, 2009, we can see a 48% decrease between these two values. If we take the relative maximum of our current situation (Valentines Day of this year, a value of 29,398.08) and the lowest value due to the coronavirus pandemic (19,173.98 on March 20) we can see a roughly 35% decrease. However, this occurred over the span of slightly over one month whereas during the great recession the decrease to the minimum occurred over almost eighteen months. This is some nice data to illustrate the severity of a pandemic and the possibility of severe shutdown, and how extreme health crises can lead to economic collapse and the slowing/halting of development at a greater level than a "normal" recession (i.e. one that is not due to extreme health crises).
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