Is the market crashing? No.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its worst weekly loss since October of 2020 and the S&P 500 SPX and Nasdaq Composite logged their worst weekly percentage drops since March 20, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data shows. Searches on Google featured the following popular queries: Is the market crashing? And why is the market crashing?

To be sure, the market isn’t crashing inasmuch as the term “crashing” is even a quantifiable market condition. Declines in stocks and other assets are sometimes described in hyperbolic terms that offer little real substance about the significance of the move. There is no precise definition for a “crash” but it is usually described in terms of time, suddenness, and/or by severity. Jay Hatfield, chief investment officer at Infrastructure Capital Management, on Saturday told MarketWatch that he might characterize a crash as a decline in an asset of at least 50%, which could happen swiftly or over a year, but acknowledged that the term is sometimes used too loosely to describe run-of-the-mill downturns. He saw bitcoin’s BTCUSD, -0.83% move as a crash, for example. He said the overall equity market’s current slump didn’t meet his crash definition, in any regard, but did say stocks were in a fragile state. “It’s not crashing but it is very weak,” Hatfield said.