AP PHOTOS: Another wild ride for global stock markets

Global markets have been on a wild ride the last few days, breaking a long period of relative calm that brought indexes to a series of record highs.

The selling started on Friday in U.S. markets, got worse on Monday, and spread to markets in Europe and Asia.

Monday's 1,175-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average was its biggest in terms of points, but not close to its largest daily percentage fall. The Dow gave up 7 percent over Friday and Monday, but it's still up about 20 percent over the last 12 months.

Tuesday brought more sharp swings, with the Dow falling as much as 567 points shortly after the opening bell then later jumping as much as 367 points.