by Calculated Risk on 3/30/2009 04:00:00 PM

These swings are wild ...

DOW down 3.3% (254 points)

S&P 500 down 3.5% (28 points)

NASDAQ down 2.8% (43 points)

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

The first graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner): "Four Bad Bears".

This is the 2nd worst S&P 500 / DOW bear market in the U.S. in 100 years.

Note that the Great Depression crash is based on the DOW; the three others are for the S&P 500.

The second graph compares four significant bear markets: the Dow during the Great Depression, the NASDAQ, the Nikkei, and the current S&P 500.

See Doug's: "The Mega-Bear Quartet and L-Shaped Recoveries".

And since I haven't posted this for awhile, here are a few credit crisis indicators ...

The British Bankers' Association reported that the three-month dollar Libor rates were fixed at 1.2075%, down from Friday's 1.22%. The dollar LIBOR was at 1.31% just 10 days ago - so this is some improvement.

The LIBOR peaked at 4.81875% on Oct. 10th, and hit a cycle low of 1.0825% on Jan. 14th.

There has been improvement in the A2P2 spread. This has declined to 0.92. This is far below the record (for this cycle) of 5.86 after Thanksgiving, but still above the normal spread.

This is the spread between high and low quality 30 day nonfinancial commercial paper.

Meanwhile the TED spread is holding steady at 108.7. This is the difference between the interbank rate for three month loans and the three month Treasury. The peak was 463 on Oct 10th and a normal spread is around 50 bps. The TED spread has been relatively flat for months (and is being impacted by the Fed and other Central Banks).