Final toll for Wall Street in 2008: $6.9 trillion gone

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.

Overseas, the year was just as dismal. In Germany, stocks were down 40 percent, in Japan, 42 percent, in Brazil, 41 percent. Taken together, all of the world’s stocks lost 48 percent last year.