To be precise,
- the Dow is ~10.6% off its record of ~50.5k;
- the NASDAQ Composite is ~12.8% off its record of ~24k; and
- the S&P 500 is ~9.1% off its record of ~7k.
Due to the outsized annual returns of the last 3 years, I came into 2026 thinking the odds of a pullback or negative year were higher than normal. However, I wasn’t confident enough to short sell the market, and I left my long-term retirement holdings unchanged. So I feel your pain.
Long before the Middle East conflict, I noticed something rotten had been brewing in the markets for a long time. It started around last October, when the S&P 500 began to flatline near the 7,000 milestone but was unable to break through it.
Under the seemingly calm surface was what’s known as a rolling bear market, in which entire industries or categories of stocks began selling off, one at a time, often far in excess of the 20% bear market threshold. Because that money was looking for new homes, investors kept rotating into other industries, keeping the index levels stable. When the last remaining dams finally burst, all that money suddenly came flooding out of the markets, leading to the current correction.
- Software / SAAS / Cloud: topped out around July 2025; currently down 30-50%
- Bitcoin / virtual currencies / fintech: topped out in Oct 2025, currently down ~40%
- Big Tech / Magnificent 7: topped out in Oct 2025, currently down ~20%
- Big banks (JPM, AmEx etc): topped out in Dec 2025; currently down 20-30%
- Gold / Silver / precious metals / miners: topped out in Jan 2026, currently down ~20-40%
- (Iran war broke out on 28th February; the NASDAQ was already 5-6% off highs then)
- The latest bubble to pop is memory/RAM, with Micron, Sandisk etc. down 20-25% from their pre-earnings run-ups.
Given the magnitude of these declines, the rest of the market that’s not AI-adjacent is actually holding up extremely well.
Dow Jones & NASDAQ Composite close in -10% correction territory
byu/MarkusEF ininvesting
Posted by MarkusEF
8 Comments
Note that while it’s the same in this case, the comparison is made to the 52 week high, not the record high.
it’ll get worse when inflation numbers come in.
Time to buy the dips, remember corrections will be not for long in discount
The new Fed chair is going to get pushed to the absolute brink. Warsh wants to shrink the Fed’s $6.6 trillion balance sheet to undo QE’s distortions, but doing so risks pushing up long-term yields, directly undermining the low borrowing costs the White House is counting on him to deliver. The market is going to test this man like no other.
I won’t call it a “correction” until Tesla is bankrupt, Sam Altman is in prison and Nvidia is begging me to buy their GPU.
It was bound to happen. I’ll be buying more next week.
It’s not all bad though. At least gas is 30% more expensive than it was a month ago.
Not buying puts was probably smart. Without war there was enough desire to juice the economy that we could have put in a year of sugar rush yet.