From dshort.com…

Over the 80-year period since 1928, the average volatility in the Dow is about 1.8%. There have been only 66 days when the intraday volatility exceeded 8%. That’s right — 66 out of over 20,300 market days. If they were evenly spread, that would be about one 8% plus volatility day every 14.5 months.

Here’s the amazing and rather disturbing part . . .

Sixteen of them have occurred since September 29th — two in the past five days. The Crash of 1929 had only eight. Another thirty followed during the ten-year Great Depression. Four were clustered around the Crash of 1987. Only two happened during the nasty 2000-2002 bear.

The current bear market has had a record-breaking nine consecutive days of 8% plus volatility (October 6 through the 16th). Second place goes to the Crash of 1929, with eight super-volatile days spread over a 14 market-day period (10/23/29 to 11/13/29).

A lot of people are given false hope by the sharp drops coupled with sharp upswings. They think that if they wait long enough, everything will go back to the way it was before. I wonder how long it is going to take before the majority of Americans realize that they have lost a lot of money they are never going to get back no matter how long they wait.