What you need to know on Wall Street today

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What you need to know on Wall Street today

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours. Sign up here to get the best of Business Insider delivered direct to your inbox.

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Buckle up: The day after the largest point-drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, markets continued to swing wildly.

After falling nearly 1,200 points yesterday, the Dow opened Tuesday down 568 points before surging to a gain of more than 250 points and continuing to whipsaw from there.

The most common scapegoat for the Monday meltdown among Wall Streeters? The robots. Machine-based traders have been blamed by many for the drop, which included a ramp up in the VIX, a measure of stock market volatility, and a steep sell-off in equities.

Speaking of the VIX: One casualty of the recent market action is Cboe Holdings, which fell 15% on Tuesday. The exchange is home to the VIX, and generates as much as a quarter of its revenue from products linked to the index.

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In 2017, shorting the VIX was one of the easiest ways to make money. But the dream is now over as the so-called stock market fear gauge, which generally trades inversely to the S&P 500 and has spent most of the last year locked near record lows, spiked a record 84% on Monday.

Two of the products designed to return the inverse of the VIX saw their combined value shrink to $150 million from $3 billion.

Here's more from Business Insider's coverage of the sell-off:

Worried about the impact the market swing is having on your investments? Lauren Lyons Cole, a certified financial planner and a senior editor at Business Insider, explains what to do with your money right now.

In other economic news, Mohamed El-Erian tells us 3% growth is within reach in the US as long as it sidesteps three risks.

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We're on the ground at SpaceX's planned launch of its biggest and most powerful rocket. Here's how to watch live.

Travis Kalanick is making his first public appearance since leaving Uber - and it's to testify in the tech trial everyone's watching.

In crypto news:

Lastly, here's where Americans pay the most in state income taxes, ranked from worst to best.