It was a pretty big deal. I ran some queries against some intraday data of a proprietary market index (kind of a cross between the S&P 500 and Russell 2000) and it was the biggest one minute drop (at -0.56%) that I found within the past year.

For comparison, here are the top 5 that I found since 4/23/12:

(1) 4/23/13 @ 13:10: -0.56% (2) 8/1/12 @ 14:14: -0.45% (3) 11/29/12 @ 11:41: -0.44% (4) 6/20/12 @ 12:33: -0.38% (5) 12/31/12 @ 13:47: -0.35%

As best as I can tell from the news on those days, (2) and (4) were related to Fed announcements and (3) and (5) were related to the fiscal cliff.

I agree that it's a big deal. But I think a lot of people are reacting to the images of the graphs, not to the actual numbers that the graphs represent.

If you could repeat that trick it would be a bit like a combustion engine. Every individual explosion doesn't amount to much in terms of force but a long sequence will get your car up to speed quite nicely.

A better chart: https://twitter.com/charlesforelle/status/326746314232692737...

1% is huge.

1% is huge in an absolute sense, but small in the impact it has on any one person. And small relative to some other news-driven price changes. Fair?