January 22, 2008 at 5:03 pm | blabbing.

The ajax tool in Google Finance is great for getting a little perspective on the markets, especially when they go crazy like they have been since the beginning of the year.

You can see that the market looks totally crazy, but if you use the stretcher bars and lengthen the time line you see that the market (Talking mainly the DOW average) is only down 3.5% since last year at this time and over the last 5 years the market is actually up 3.5%. If you look back in the history, which the tool provides you see the crash of 1987 where the market only lost 432 points but the whole DOW average was at just above 2500 making that drop more substantial.

Although this downward slide has been in effect since the DOW hit 14,000 around October last year, the same correction would give us a relative bottom of around. 11,500 – 11,300 or so. In October of 2002 the DOW dropped below 8,000 for the first time since crossing it in 1998.

Buck up little campers. Buy the ticket. Take the ride.