Equity markets around the globe sold off on the first market day of 2016. Before the US market opened, China's Shanghai Composite was the big attention grabber, down a whopping 6.86%. European indexes were in the deep red, and Germany's DAX would subsequently post a 4.28% loss. Our benchmark S&P 500 plunged at the open and sold off to its -2.65% intraday low about 90 minutes later. It traded in a relatively narrow range until a rally in the final 30 minutes of trading trimmed the loss of the day to -1.53%.
The yield on the 10-year note closed at 2.24%, down 3 bps from the previous close.
Before we look at our usual chart set, here's a look at the first day of January trading in the S&P 500 since its inception in March 1957. Today's -1.53% was the fourth lowest close of the 66 annual openers. The worst was in 2001 preceding the recession that started in March of that year. The second lowest was in January 1980, the month a recession started. The third worst was in 1983, two months after the 16-month recession of 1981-82 ended.
Here is a snapshot of past five sessions.
Here is a daily chart. Volume was closer to pre-holiday levels.
A Perspective on Drawdowns
Here's a snapshot of selloffs since the 2009 trough.
For a longer-term perspective, here is a log-scale chart base on daily closes since the all-time high prior to the Great Recession.
Here is the same chart with the 50- and 200-day moving averages. The 50 crossed below the 200 on August 28th.
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