April was a brutal month for stocks. Here are 3 charts that lay out the carnage, and 1 that should give investors hope

April was a brutal month for stocks. Here are 3 charts that lay out the carnage, and 1 that should give investors hope

Warren Buffett likened the stock markets to a "gambling parlor" at this weekend's annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders conference. If that's true, this is one lousy casino.

The day before the Oracleof Omaha spoke, April closed with a thud. Friday's sell-off, in which the Nasdaq Composite fell 537 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average took at 939-point haircut, pushed markets into the record books. Even Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which had been outperforming most blue-chips this year, couldn't escape the carnage. It fell 3.8% last week.

Zooming out, the Nasdaq fell a whopping 13% in April, the tech-heavy exchange's worst monthly performance since the autumn of 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis. It's now down 21% for the year, solidly in bear territory. As for the S&P 500, it's off to its worst start to a year since 1939.