Hacker News

points by compiler-guy 3 days ago | 0 comments

According to the Googles, there have been approximately 14,000 trading days since the Nasdaq Composite was founded, and it has fallen four-percent or more 147 days, meaning that we get a decline like this roughly every 100 trading days, which means about twice a calendar year, very roughly.

That's newsworthy, but also not extremely unusual.

The more interesting detail than nasdaq overall is just what sectors are having bad days and how concentrated that is. Seems to be predominantly AI companies, which is very relevant to the HN crowd.

[–] deadmutex 3 days ago

> meaning that we get a decline like this roughly every 100 trading days, which means about twice a calendar year, very roughly.

Stock volatility is typically clustered. So, we can't make this type of claim. Just like this statement is flawed: Chicago experiences below freezing weather 10% of the time, so every 10 days you see below freezing weather.

[–] ajross 2 days ago

Just to come back and clarify: it bounced this morning. Yesterday wasn't the crash. It's not a cluster. Grandparent point was fundamentally correct. "Nothing to see here", as it were.

[–] YetAnotherNick 3 days ago

It happened in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2025 and 2026, so 6 out of last 11 years. Not sure if I would count it as too rare.

[–] nilamo 3 days ago

That's every other year, which is quite different from 2+yearly, which is exactly the point the gp was making.

[–] ajross 2 days ago

I think "every other year" is 100% of a piece with grandparent's point, which is that this is "newsworthy but not notable".

Markets move. Sometimes they move more than normal. This is one of those times.

Will it keep moving? Will it crash? Maybe! But what it has done right now is not that.

[–] compiler-guy 3 days ago

"Four times every two years" isn't exactly the same as "twice every year", but also reflects a similar, "not that unusual" answer.

Although I didn't claim "twice every year like clockwork" in my top-level comment either. It's just a very basic statement of the base rate.

Make it eight-times every four years or sixteen-times every eight years. Or maybe "Four-times every other year, in a clustered fashion".

I don't think any of that really changes the point.

[–] furyofantares 2 days ago

It does change the point! If it happened roughly twice a year, it's not as noteworthy when it happens than if tends to happen every other year, but four times.

It's more noteworthy when it happens the more clustered it tends to be. If it were typical that we'd go ~7 years with none then have ~16 in a single year, it would be huge news when it happens.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

Corrections (down 10% or more): about one per year on average. The Nasdaq is more volatile than the S&P 500, which has a correction closer to every 1.5 to 2 years.

[–] what 3 days ago

Every other year is much less frequent than twice a year?

[–] compiler-guy 3 days ago

Multiple times every other year.

[–] asdfasvea 2 days ago

'Biannual' finally found it's perfect use case.

[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

If the bank collapse in Paraguay hadn’t happened today, and stocks hadn’t initially risen yesterday, I’d tend to agree with you. This is odd enough to potentially have a better explanation than everyone got happy and then sad all of a sudden.

[–] method_capital 2 days ago

Paraguayan banks don't mean a whole lot in the global financial markets.

[–] Fargren 2 days ago

The fall of the bank didn't cause Nasdaq to fall. But the opposite direction, or both events having a common cause? Entirely possible.

[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

Paraguayan banks with close ties to a politician with, in turn, ties to the Trump family absolutely hint at money moving around.

[–] golden-face 2 days ago

I thought the bank collapsed on Monday? And it was only like a 3 billion dollar bank? So note huge.

[–] shermantanktop 2 days ago

Read enough of these “explanations” of what the market did and a portrait emerges of extreme emotional volatility combined with a fantastic imagination. The market is insanely happy because x went up, which means the Fed will do y, and so pork belly futures will do z. Oh no! Now it is sad! But for the same reason?

[–] throwaway2037 2 days ago

For the same reason, spot FX commentary is utter garbage, yet there seems to be unlimited amounts of it.

[–] dodger-dog 2 days ago

Wall Street banks avoided becoming a political talking point with that action yesterday.

[–] grey-area 2 days ago

Statistics about up and down days or particular periods of the stock market can say whatever you want, because they're so easy to cherry-pick.

A more interesting stat is the current CAPE.

https://www.thetrading.tools/shiller-cape

It is at levels only seen three times in the last century.

[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

To be fair, there is no theoretical model for estimating natural CAPE. I’d argue the world of the post 1990s deserves a higher CAPE than the one which preceded it, though we’re trying hard in American to undo that stability.

[–] nly 2 days ago

And has been since 2016

[–] danudey 2 days ago

As others have said, averages aren't useful unless the behavior matches the average.

If those 147 4% drops actually happened every 100 days or so then it's not newsworthy or interesting, just an occasional correction.

If those 147 days happened all in a row that would mean the nasdaq dropped to 0.25% of its original value in about 4 months, which would be catastrophic.

The real answer is presumably somewhere in the middle, but the specifics are what determines if it's worth noting or not.

[–] dodger-dog 2 days ago

It's just diversity at work. Money is diversifying out of US corporations and flooding into other assets and markets. Expectations of the American economy's near-term future have outrun the realities on the ground, so you could say it is a diversification of expectations, too.

[–] dataviz1000 2 days ago

It seems what happens, because of regime change, is investors will take profit moving to cash, and in the coming weeks reposition. For example, Elon is going to have to pay for Doge so he is a political loser. Moving out of SpaceX is pragmatic and expect those who do drive up demand for something else in the coming weeks.

At the end of the day, everyone's retirement is tied to the SP500 and it will always go up.

[–] AnimalMuppet 2 days ago

> At the end of the day, everyone's retirement is tied to the SP500 and it will always go up.

Not when more retired boomers are pulling more money out than GenZ/Alphas are putting in.

[–] david-gpu 2 days ago

You are not taking into account foreign investors. Plenty of countries have a healthy population pyramid and are quickly industrializing.

[–] dataviz1000 2 days ago

> retired boomers

That isn't where the money propping up the SP500 is coming from. It is a ponzi scheme, yes. It is held up by $40,000,000,000,000 in national debt. That can is getting kicked down the line to one or two generations that haven't been born yet.

You and I don't need to worry about it because we will be long gone by then.

All we know is that Elon isn't getting any more freshly minted currency.

[–] selectodude 2 days ago

That’s literally impossible. The market requires a buyer and a seller. If the retired boomers pull their money out, it’ll move the markets to a place that is attractive and affordable for the Gen Alpha.

[–] stubish 2 days ago

Indexes are essentially 'the rich getting richer'. Great news for wealth disparity if true. But I suspect boomer inheritances will become intergenerational wealth given average number of children and rising age people inherit at.

[–] noir_lord 2 days ago

https://finviz.com/index/COMP?p=d I find those square visualisations valuable since they indicate both size and delta.

[–] mywittyname 3 days ago

It's funny: for all the "pattern recognition" people try to apply to markets, they often miss the very basic ones. "Record highs" are incredibly common, and "corrections" also happen regularly.

June had two similar NASDAQ corrections, July had one as well. Sept was flat, but October was a straight downward trend. On the flip side, April to June was a constantly increasing.

The last time the NASDAQ was this low was all the way back in April 2026...

[–] woah 2 days ago

By definition it is either at a record high or in a correction, especially with inflation

[–] abirch 2 days ago

I get what you're saying, however, a correction is technically a 10% drawdown from a recent high: https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/market-correction-what-do... so you can be neither in a correction nor at an all-time high. You can be down 0.01% to 9.99%

[–] qurren 2 days ago

Also, I wonder who defines these "territories"

People seem to call it a "correction" to make themselves feel better but they're all just crashes to me, and crashes are normal

[–] russli1993 2 days ago

AI infra stocks are down more than 50% from the peak and hyperscalers stocks have underperformed the market in 1 year.

[–] davidhunter 2 days ago

What about 6% or more?

[–] gottorf 3 days ago

Probably more helpful to see the Z-score.

[–] paulpauper 3 days ago

it's the same pattern too. except for 2000 or 2008 it tends to come back really fast too .