Stock Charts: 1929 & 2009

Rothbard starts chapter nine of America's Great Depression stating, "By early 1930, people were generally convinced that there was little to worry about." The news today is filled with positive stories about unemployment, housing, and economic recovery as if there is little to worry about. So I went to find some stock charts comparing the past few years with the 1930s. Though I'm sure I've seen some overlayed charts in the past, I couldn't find any. If you know of any, please post a link. Here are some charts I found to which I compared current charts from bigcharts.com.

The first one, from http://www.online-stock-trading-guide.com/1930-stock-chart.html, shows 4 1/2 years of the DJIA from Oct 1928 to March 1933. That is one year prior to the 29 crash until the bottom of the market in 33. In comparison is a chart of the last 3 years from BigCharts. This is a little more than one year prior to the start of the current depression. This makes the relative starting points of the two charts a little off but fairly close. We haven't transgressed 3 years into the recession, so the current chart is of shorter duration.


The second set of charts compares 1930 (once again from http://www.online-stock-trading-guide.com/1930-stock-chart.html) to 2008. The stock market crash occurred in October 1929, a couple months after the Great Depression began. The current recession supposedly began in December 2007. Thus, 1930 is the first full year of the Great Depression and 2008 is the first full year of the current depression.


The last set of charts compares the period of 1924 to 1933 to the past decade of 1999 to 2009. The 1924 to 1933 chart is duplicated in numerous places on the web, but I pulled it from http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_01/seymour062001.html. The circles refer to quotes listed in the article at gold-eagle.com. If you haven't seen the article before, click through for a good read.


If we overlaid the second chart starting in 2003 onto the first chart starting at 1925, it looks like there would be strong similarity.

While trying to find charts, I came across one other interesting comparison. From Numbers From the Wasteland, here is current unemployment to unemployment in the 20s & 30s.
If you have any other good comparisons or better charts, please post.