With so much happening yesterday, I missed posting the intraday volatility update. I've been tracking the Dow percentage spread between daily highs and lows exceeding our 8% red-flag threshold.

Over the 80-year period since 1928, the average volatility in the Dow is about 1.8%. There have been only 67 days when the intraday volatility exceeded 8%. That's right — 66 out of over 20,300 market days. If they were evenly spread, that would be about one 8% plus volatility day every 14.4 months.

Here's the amazing and rather disturbing part . . .

Seventeen of them have occurred since September 29th. The Crash of 1929 had only eight. Another thirty followed during the ten-year Great Depression. Four were clustered around the Crash of 1987. Only two happened during the nasty 2000-2002 bear.

The current bear market has had a record-breaking nine consecutive days of 8% plus volatility (October 6 through the 16th). Second place goes to the Crash of 1929, with eight super-volatile days spread over a 14 market-day period (10/23/29 to 11/13/29).

Here's a snapshot of the data, and here is a set of charts showing Dow volatility since 1928.

So, where does this volatility lead us? These 67 manic-depressive days were almost evenly split (33:34) between up and down days. The range is astonishing — from a 15.3% gain in March 1933 to a 22.6% decline on Black Monday, the Crash of 1987. But if you combine the stats, the results are unremarkable. The sum of the 67 gains and losses is -3.1%. The average is 0.05%.

If you're into high risk trading, these high-volatility days are the ultimate challenge. For long-term investors, try deep breathing exercises, or (my favorite) pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching.