ANALYSIS
Dow lost 14.1% in Oct., but that pales against 30.7% in Sept. 1931

BusinessWeek Nov 3, 08 4:55 PM CST
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It would be hard to overstate the impact of the past 2 months on those who work and invest in the stock market, Ben Steverman writes for BusinessWeek . The crisis has surely spurred many investors to reevaluate the risks, but is it a game-changer, historically speaking? Although it was steep, the Dow’s October decline of 14.1% is smaller than 15 other months on record.
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ANALYSIS
'It’s just a bear trying to do a show in this environment,' Mad Money host says

New York Times Oct 20, 08 9:14 AM CDT
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Jim Cramer was long Wall Street’s most reliable cheerleader, psyching up investors on his high-octane CNBC show. He’s insisted several times this year that the worst was over—only to tell viewers this month to forsake stocks entirely. “It is harder to get it right than any time I have seen in my career,” he tells New York Times media columnist David Carr.
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analysis
Wall Street is facing one of its worst bear markets since World War II

New York Times Oct 16, 08 12:50 PM CDT
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An increasingly familiar Wall Street phenomenon—a three-digit swing in the Dow, usually down, in the final hour of trading—is a direct result of population growth in one species: bears. Margin calls are forcing panicked sell-offs, it's true, but the situation is more complicated than that, experts tell the New York Times.
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MARKETS
After early surge, Dow drops 300

Wall Street Journal Oct 16, 08 10:49 AM CDT
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Stocks reversed their early gains to plunge downward today, with the Dow dropping as much as 324 points, the Wall Street Journal reports, after being up 140 earlier in the morning. The S&P was down 1.9%, thanks largely to a 6% slide in its consumer-staples sector, while the Nasdaq fell 2.8%. All rebounded slightly before noon but remained in negative territory.
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OPINION
This election ended when economy tanked; the rest is shouting

Washington Post Oct 15, 08 10:53 AM CDT
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John McCain isn’t losing because he’s running an incompetent campaign, Michael Gerson writes in the Washington Post . Rather, his campaign only looks incompetent because the economy doomed him to lose. When a campaign is sinking, pundits weigh in with their pet suggestions, while insisting that “the candidate must be himself.” But it doesn’t matter who the candidate is: This campaign ended when the market tanked.
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London, Paris, Frankfurt all dive at opening

Financial Times (UK) Oct 10, 08 3:40 AM CDT
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Stock markets across Europe took a pounding this morning, following a dramatic market dive in Asia that saw the Tokyo exchange suffer its worst loss in 20 years. In London the FTSE opened down 10%, with similar losses in Paris and Frankfurt. Banking stocks were among the biggest losers in Europe.
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Lower rates and commodity prices and stocks that looks cheap could trigger a run

Los Angeles Times Oct 9, 08 2:29 PM CDT
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Apocalyptic attitudes abound, but weed through the financial doom and gloom and you'll find a few economists who think we've bottomed out, and that a bull market is up next, writes Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times . The Dow has dropped 34.6% in the last year, but recent signs—bargain-basement interest rates, yesterday's coordinated rate cut, reduced commodities prices—point to a turnaround, say some.
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Central banks pump cash, but bourses tumble

Financial Times (UK) Sep 16, 08 7:15 AM CDT
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Europe's central banks pumped huge amounts of cash into markets today as stock exchanges dove and interbank lending slowed to a trickle. Just after midday in London, the FTSE 100 was down by nearly 2%, with investment banks and insurers leading declines. The Bank of England injected $35.8 billion into the markets, while the European Central Bank released nearly $100 billion in emergency funds.
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MARKETS
Dow off 344 as investors grow more worried about economy's health

MarketWatch Sep 4, 08 3:34 PM CDT
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The markets plummeted today amid poor jobs data and mixed retail sales, MarketWatch reports. Falling oil futures again failed to stimulate stocks as energy increasingly looks like a victim, not a perpetrator, of the economic slump. The Dow fell 344.65 to close at 11,188.23. The Nasdaq lost 74.69, closing at 2,259.04, and the S&P 500 shed 42.15, settling at 1,232.83.
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Nasdaq also falls more than 20% from its high

Wall Street Journal Jul 2, 08 3:33 PM CDT
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Skidding stocks sent the Dow and Nasdaq into bear territory as oil hit a record near $144 a barrel, the Wall Street Journal reports. Besides oil, bad news from GM and weak jobs data darkened the street’s mood. The Dow fell 166.75 points to 11,215.51, down 20.8% from its record high in October. A drop of 20% is the traditional threshold for a bear market. The Nasdaq fell 53.51 points to 2,251.46, and the S&P 500 fell 23.38 points to 1,261.53.
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Oracle of Omaha prepares $40B spending spree

Bloomberg May 2, 08 2:02 PM CDT
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As the US teeters on the brink of recession and most investors remain sidelined by the credit crunch, Warren Buffett is poised to spend more than $40 billion to scoop up bargains. Berkshire Hathaway rose 22% over the last 12 months while other stocks sputtered, and now, Bloomberg reports, the company is one of the few with the cash on hand to profit from a bear market.
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Study pinpoints role of bullish hormone in boorish traders

Daily Telegraph (UK) Apr 15, 08 4:25 AM CDT
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The buying and selling of the world's wealth is at the mercy of aggressive men and their hormonal fluctuations, neuroscientists have discovered. While that doesn't come as a big surprise, the study isolates the major role that testosterone plays in making boorish traders exceptionally bullish—and the part the hormone cortisol plays in slumps, reports the Daily Telegraph .
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Bombastic market guru says Bear deal marks end of crisis; buy JP Morgan

New York Mar 21, 08 11:11 AM CDT
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We've hit bottom, Jim Cramer proclaims. Bear Stearns' collapse may have been apocalyptic in scale, but it at least woke up a complacent Fed and Treasury secretary, the bombastic market guru writes in New York today. “We’ve been through dozens of false bottoms,” he says, but now Bernanke and Paulson are “basically saying they will do anything to save the system.”
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'Belle of the bull market' Cohen has more pessimistic successor

Bloomberg Mar 18, 08 6:39 AM CDT
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Goldman Sachs has replaced its famously bullish chief forecaster, Abby Joseph Cohen, with a less upbeat analyst, Bloomberg reports. Cohen will remain as senior investment strategist, handing over the daily predictions to David Kostin. Kostin sees a decline for the S&P 500 to 1160 in the short run, and a rebound to 1,380 by year's end. Cohen, by contrast, predicted in December that the index would reach 1,675 in 2008.
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London, Frankfurt bourses swing wildly in early trading

Financial Times (UK) Jan 22, 08 5:30 AM CST
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European markets went haywire in early trading Tuesday as investors reacted to a second straight day of Asian declines and awaited the reopening of Wall Street. After a disastrous showing for the Nikkei, Hang Seng and other Asian bourses, European markets plunged: the FTSE 100 dropped 200 points minutes after opening. Yet shares in London rallied amid rumors of emergency rate cuts by the three main central banks.
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