Dow is on track for its worst quarterly performance since 1987 -- here's how the stock market tends t

In a word, historic, but returns are almost certain to improve over the longer term despite the current pain, if history is any guide.

Indeed, it has been punishing for investors, as the market went into a coronavirus-sparked free fall that so far has the 124-year-old Dow Jones Industrial Average on pace to register its worst quarterly loss since the fourth quarter of 1987. The three-month skid also would represent the steepest first-quarter drop, from January through the end of March, in the index’s history, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The dizzying equity meltdown has amounted to a more than 21% quarterly skid thus far for the Dow industrials DJIA, -1.412%, while the S&P 500 SPX, -1.382% has declined more than 18% over the quarter, which would mark the broad-market index’s sharpest such decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Check out the table below, as of late morning on Tuesday:

INDEX QUARTERLY % CHANGE BEST/WORST SINCE
Dow -21.5% Q4 1987
S&P 500 -18.4% Q4 2008
Nasdaq Composite Index -12.6% Q4 2018
Source: Dow Jones Market Data