The next few sessions played out that pattern very closely, and over the past week we've seen the indices dive, triggering yet more crash-type comparisons.  It has been extremely rare to see this kind of persistent selling pressure, and in fact it is unprecedented on many levels.

Before the past week, the Dow had never before suffered through six straight 1% or more daily declines in its 100+ years of history, it had never before lost as much as it did in one week last week, and we had never before seen 75% of all issues on the NYSE hit a 52-week low at the same time.

That kind of activity will trigger many extremes in the guides that we watch, and we haven't been disappointed in that regard.  Here are just a few that we discussed in the comments over the past couple of weeks:

We saw the latter situation again, a common theme over the past year.  That led to a re-test of Friday's lows, with the Nasdaq 100 touching its worst level from Friday almost to the point.  We saw another upside reversal today, but it remains to be seen whether this one can finally stick.

There has been some improvement in the credit market indicators that have been so much of a focus, which is a good start.  Now we need to see traders react less to the potential for even more government intervention, and more on the merits of individual earnings and economic reports.  That would be a welcome change in character.

While the past few days have been a challenge in terms of the indices dropping further than they "should" have given what we discussed early in the week, so far they've been able to hold above the worst levels from Friday and we're sticking with the outlook that last Friday marked the end of the vast bulk of the selling pressure, leading to what should be a decent fourth quarter.  If we cannot hold Friday's lows, or at least quickly regain them after a violation, then we will be in truly uncharted territory - something no trader has witnessed in more than a century of market history.