#stock market

The S&P 500 gained 9.6% in the first half of 2026 while the Magnificent Seven, a third of the index, went up 2.6%. That gap is the whole story, and most recaps skip right past it.

There’s a famous claim that stocks underperform on Mondays and outperform on Fridays. The pattern was real for decades. Whether it’s still real is a more interesting question than most articles bother to ask.

October 29, 1929 wasn’t even the worst day of the 1929 crash, and it didn’t cause the Great Depression on its own. But it was the day the music permanently stopped, and it’s worth understanding what actually happened.

On October 19, 1987, the Dow fell 22.6% in a single day. There was no war, no bank failure, no terror attack. The crash was caused by the safety mechanism that was supposed to prevent crashes.

October is the month investors fear, and the data partly justifies it. Three of the worst days in market history happened in October. The average return is fine. Both things are true.

The NYSE closes for ten full holidays a year, plus three early-close days, plus the occasional emergency. Here’s the full calendar and the surprising history behind some of the dates.

A $1 move in a $5 stock and a $1 move in a $500 stock are not the same thing. Here's why traders almost never talk in dollars, and the few cases where they actually do.