We’re used to big stock-market swings in the last hour or even half-hour of trading. But the last ten minutes? The Dow was at 9,350 at 3:48; ten minutes later, it was at 8,960. That’s a drop of almost 400 points, or 39 points a minute.
At that rate, it would have taken just 230 more minutes — less than four hours — to go all the way to zero. Never have those decimal points in Dow reports seemed so silly: we’re rapidly reaching the point at which all you can do with any meaning is round to the nearest thousand.