Wall Street's Final '08 Toll: $6.9 Trillion Wiped Out

Racked by Crisis, Markets End Year on Slight Upswing

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2009; A01

After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.

It hardly mattered that the market finished the last day of the year with a modest gain.

The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 41 percent, its worst year since the exchange was created in 1971.