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How crazy of a year has it been for oil?
This may be a trivial thought, but here's another way to think about how extreme the volatility has been in crude oil this year: If the Dow tracked crude oil's wild price volatility this year, how wide of a swing would it have seen this year?
Hypothetically, if the Dow moved just as oil has this year, the index would be at 15,193 right now—about 1,000 points below where it is now. But look at what it would have done throughout the year. Its low would have been 12,794 and its high would have been 20,553. That would be a range of nearly 8,000 points.
The Dow's actual range this year is a little over 2,600 points with a closing low of 15,666 and a closing high of 18,312.