After a roller coaster day, markets had a muddled close on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial average recovered 60.9 points of the 513 points lost in its Thursday plummet, while Nasdaq was down one percent for the day and Standard & Poors was in the red by a hair. But don't let those numbers reassure you. Christine Hauser at The New York Times puts the total week's losses into perspective:

In the end, the broader market as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500 index was unable to muster a gain, just barely slipping into the red with a 0.69 point decline. That meant it finished the week down 7.1 percent, making it the worst weekly decline since November 2008.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 5.7 percent for the week and the Nasdaq closed 8 percent lower.

For what it's worth, gold is still valuable.

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Adam Clark Estes