The Dow and S&P 500 just logged the worst start to a quarter in history as investors brace for ‘very, very painful’ weeks of coronavirus - MarketWatch

The stock market started the second quarter nearly the same way it ended March, with bruising losses.

A resumption of declines to start the first trading day in April, or the second quarter, for already-battered equity gauges, resulted in the worst start to a quarter for stock-market bulls ever.

For the broad-market S&P 500 index, its decline of 4.44% represents the index’s worst first day of any quarter on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The index was created in 1957, to put things into perspective.

Rank/Worst	S&P 500 % change	Date
1	-3.69	Jan. 2, 1932
2	-3.01	Oct. 1, 1998
3	-2,97	Oct. 1, 1934
4	-2.85%	Oct. 3, 2011
5	-2.80	Jan. 2, 2001
		Source: Dow Jones Market Data

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, logged its worst start to the first three months in a calendar year in its 124-year history, managing to exceed a 4.32% decline put in to start the third quarter of 1896.

Rank/Worst	DJIA % change	Dates
1	-4.32	July 1, 1896
2	-4.21	Jan. 2, 1932
3	-3.52	Jan. 2, 1904
4	-2.82	April 1, 1898
5	-2.74	April 1, 1929
		Source: Dow Jones Market Data

The Dow DJIA, -4.44% on Wednesday closed 973 points, or 4.44%, lower to 20,944, the S&P 500 SPX, -4.41% tumbled 114 points, or 4.41%, to 2,470.50, while The Nasdaq Composite COMP, -4.40% closed 340 points, or 4.41%, lower to 7,360.

Stocks also ended lower on Tuesday, capping a quarter that saw stocks tumble from February records into a bear market at record speed.

The first quarter marked the worst quarterly performance for the Dow since the fourth quarter of 1987, and the three-month skid also represented the steepest first-quarter drop, from January through the end of March, in the index’s history, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Read:Here’s how the stock market tends to perform after brutal quarters

Wednesday’s action comes as U.S. investors are coming to grips with the prospect of a long haul for the economy and the markets amid a pandemic that has been contracted by more than 900,000 people world-wide. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump warned that a “very, very painful” two weeks lie ahead for the country in face of a rapidly spreading COVID-19 epidemic, which originated in December in Wuhan, China and has brought much of the world to a screeching halt to slow the spread of the deadly pathogen.

See:Dow faces crucial April test as coronavirus pandemic brings ‘blizzard of bad news’

Michael Destefano contributed to this article

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2020-04-01 20:36:39Z
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