Stock Market 2008 - Third Worst Opening Day

Wednesday, Jan 2, 2008 was the first trading day of 2008,

and it was the third worst opening for the DOW since WWII.

However, Wednesday's performance doesn't

necessarily mean that stocks will have a bad year in 2008:


10 Worst Stock Market Opening Days since WWII (DOW 30 index)
-------------------------------------------------                           
Rank     Date     first day(%)     full year(%)
1.         1/3/1983     -1.86             +20.27

2.         1/2/1980     -1.69             +14.93

3.         1/2/2008     -1.67             ?

4.         1/3/1978     -1.62             -3.15

5.         1/2/2001     -1.30             -7.10

6.         1/3/1949     -1.30             +12.86

7.         1/3/2000     -1.21             -6.18

8.         1/3/1989     -1.10             +26.96

9.         1/2/1985     -1.05             +27.66

10.       1/4/1971     -1.00              +6.11


If we look at the other nine years in the chart above, we see that six of them ended with stocks gaining an average of 18.13%!

The other three years posted an average decline of 5.48%.