A computation can be made for the growth between any two days from when the indexes are first published to the present. If the market was not open on one of the dates you select, the next closest date is used. The answer is the annualized growth rate between the two days compounded daily (Note: data are updated weekly).
To compare the growth rate of one period with another, you can add as many ranges as you wish.
The most recent closing values of the data set are for July 3, 2008, and are 11288.02 for the DJIA, 1262.9 for the S&P500, and 2245.38 for the NASDAQ.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was first published on October 7, 1896 with the data use on MeasuringWorth extended back to May 2, 1885 using the Dow Jones Average. (See Daily Closing Values of the Dow Jones Average.) The Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500) was first reported daily on March 4, 1957, and the NASDAQ (an abbreviation for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) started on February 8, 1971.
The largest percentage one-day decrease for all three indexes was on October 19, 1987, when the DJIA dropped 507.99 to 1,738.74, the S&P 500 fell from 282.70 to 224.84, and the NASDAQ went from 406.3 to 360.2. The annualized growth rate for each of these would be -100% since if this rate of decrease continued for a year, each index would be zero long before a year was out.
In the 50 years that the S&P 500 has been published daily, the greatest one-day increase was two days later, when the index rose from 236.83 to 258.38, or a 9.1% increase for that one day.
The largest percentage increase in the DJIA average was on October 6, 1931, when the index increased 12.86 to close at 99.34. This is a one day increase of 14.87%.
For the NASDAQ, the largest increase was January 3, 2001 when it rose 324.83 to 2616.69 for a one day increase of 14.17%.
The annualize rate of all three of these record days increases are astronomical having percentages with up to 23 digits.
Samuel H. Williamson, "Annualized Growth Rate and Graphs of the DJIA, S&P500, and NASDAQ in the United States Between Any Two Dates," MeasuringWorth, 2008.
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