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Comment by dak1 | Hacker News Reader

That graph seems a bit sensationalist by using ~2800 as the base of its y-axis, and the stocks are still up for the year.

It looks like the stocks are down about 20% from their high, which isn't that unusual for a stock market (and probably is appropriate considering how much stocks went up this year).

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The market dropped over 7% in a day, that's extreme for anyone other than a bitcoin speculator! The plunge could have been larger except for 70% of stocks hitting their automatic market stops.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/06/26/2133062/calling-a-top-...

Regarding the y-axis -- that is standard practice in financial graphs. You can see the same thing when looking at a related index in Google Finance: https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3ADJSH&ei=LKGNVeHf...

I wish they would add an option to start the y axis at zero, to depict the asset's volatility.

Just zoom out to the 5 year view, same effect.

A 20% plunge in the West would be a disastrous thing or at least generate thousands of news articles about it, why does HN give a double standard to autocratic states? I keep hearing about how the ruble devaluation and now this are all perfectly fine. I don't think one article from Bloomberg is so horrible. Hell, I don't even see this on the front page of google news. Where is this massive sensationalism? Hell, is this even an issue on a site where pretty much all its politics is sensationalism to extremist degrees? Interesting what we find fault with here.

There's some real stupid bias on HN honestly.

The figure almost doubled in 2 months, then contracted 20%. If your stock is that volatile then 20% is not really newsworthy.

Their market has been in one of the greatest bubble runs in the history of stock markets. It's extraordinarily significant to see it go parabolic for weeks, then crash 20% in ten or so trading days, particularly given the amount of margin Chinese investors had taken on in such a short amount of time.

It very likely points to a further drop ahead. I don't think you'll be regarding a 40% drop as not being newsworthy.

It has nothing to do with China being autocratic or not, it's simply a very volatile market. The Chinese stock market is still UP for the year, and 20% is just correction territory, it's not close to a "disastrous" thing considering how quickly and how much it has gained recently. In fact, one may even argue it's healthy.

I'm certainly not suggesting its some great depression, but clearly its note and newsworthy and this article reflects that. Why the protesting about the article? What exactly is the problem? In autocratic regimes state media's job is rally stocks and, yes, the lack of which is very telling, which is what this article is about.

Again, what exactly is the problem here? If this was any Western economy, HN'ers wouldn't be falling over themsleves trying to dismiss it as sensationalist, especially when you consider the endless parade of anti-US sensationalism that often dominates this site and its collective narrative.

Because Western economies have been in dire straits for over a decade. A drop like that would be significant and unlikely to reverse. The West has no economic growth engine to fall back on.

China has had so much astronomical growth that this drop doesn't undo all of that overnight.

If it continues, and it may very well, then you have a story.

Also, it's not good to create fear in the general public which is another reason to downplay this. If it's met with hysterical headlines, then the event of a crash in the global markets will be a self fulfilling prophecy. Markets react to group psychology and FUD in the general public.

I just read that China has 21 trillion in their banks from people saving. It feels to me China has so many resources that they are unstoppable. Banks lend 10x the assets they have so that is 210 trillion available to lend. Not to mention the assets that the government has itself. There are so many state or partially state owned businesses that they can sell parts of. Even the debts of creating whole cities, it just doesn't seem to me that there is going to be any sort of damper on what China does. Especially with everyone wanting to throw money at them to get into business there.

BTC can move 20% one way or the other and it wouldn't be news.

Fact: Chinese markets have more volatility and it really isn't too newsworthy to see "Chinese Stocks moved a lot recently"

Are you really trying to use Bitcoin as a measure of normality?

Are you implying that we should use the Chinese Stock Market as a measure of normality?

It's not meaningful to talk about absolute returns, what matters is returns/time. It's a 20% drop in less than a month, and that's pretty large.

I agree, I think the headline is sensational.

We changed the sensational bit to a more representative phrase from the article.

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