the stock market’s thursday plunge puts the dow jones industrial average on track for its biggest twoday downside turnaround since june 2020 other major us indexes were also on track for stomachchurning declines following a wednesday relief rally stocks soared wednesday after the federal reserve delivered a widely expected half percentage point interest rate increase and chairman jerome powell signaled at least two more outsize hikes were likely but said an even larger 75 basis point move wasn’t being actively considered the dow djia jumped around 932 points or 28 on wednesday but was down around 1040 points or 31 early thursday afternoon after dropping more than 1200 points at its session low if the loss holds it would mark the first time the bluechip gauge saw backtoback 2 moves since june 2020 according to dow jones market data and it would be the first time it fell more than 2 on the trading day following a gain of 2 or more since april 2020 that said stocks have been remarkably choppy on a daytoday basis in 2022 through the end of april the sp 500 spx saw 12 days where it finished up or down more than 2 that happened just seven times in all of 2021 it has exceeded or is on track to top totals for every year going back to 2011 with the exception of 2020 according to dow jones market data earlier choppy stock market got you seasick why investors don’t expect smooth sailing soon the cboe volatility index vix  an optionsbased measre of expected volatility in the sp 500 jumped 18 to 3006 on thursday above its longterm average below 20 and a sign that investors are preparing for volatile conditions to continue the index jumped last week to a nearly twomonth high above 36 before pulling back earlier this week and briefly trading below 25 on wednesday with moves on wednesday and thursday the sp 500 spx was on track to add two more 2 days to the tally the largecap benchmark was down 34 thursday after a 3 wednesday rise the sp 500 suffered a similar turnabout as recently as last week it’s the same story for the nasdaq composite comp  which was leading the tumble for major indexes with a drop of 46 after surging 32 on wednesday the last time it saw a fall of 4 the day after a rise of more tahn 3 was also last week