After the Great Depression

What happened after the Great Depression of 1929?

After the stock market crash of 1929, stocks spiraled downward for the next three years, losing a crushing 85 percent of their value.

By that point, many investors abandoned the stock market altogether. But some stock strategists did recognize that stocks were ready for a rebound. Stock prices had been battered by a raft of uncertainties but that those bargains would disappear once the uncertainties were gone.

Stocks hit bottom the following summer and then went up 100 percent the next year.

Today’s generation of investors have now witnessed a decline in stocks that has been as tough as any bear market of the past century. In this downturn, stocks hit a major low in October 2002. By that time, this bear market was into its third year, had erased five years of market gains, and had dropped nearly 50 percent. The markets have not fallen into a bottomless pit, however.

Time and again over the past years, stocks set out on promising rallies only to be driven back down.

Troubling news seemed to come from every direction:

As if the news were not already bad enough, the stock market also had the calendar working against it.

Historically, September has the dubious distinction of being the only month when, on average, the market goes down.

In September 2002, the S&P 500 fell 11 percent, far and away the steepest plunge for that month in 25 years.