How bad was last week’s rout in US equities? The slide is the biggest weekly drop for the S&P 500 Index in over two years. But that’s not saying much, given how calm the upside bias for the equity trend has been lately. Perhaps the bigger surprise is that we’ve gone so long without a meaningful setback. But don’t be too quick to dismiss the latest fall from grace as insignificant. A deeper review of the numbers reveals that the S&P’s 3.9% slump over the five trading days through Feb. 2 marks one of the deepest on record for the past six decades-plus.
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