S&P 500 · July 19, 2002
The summer the books could not be trusted
-3.84%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The dot-com bust hits the S&P 500
near the end of it · 2000-03-24 → 2002-10-09, -49.15% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The S&P 500 fell 3.84% to close at 847.75. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
- The summer of 2002 was when accounting frauds at large companies kept coming to light
- What broke was not prices but belief in the numbers. If reported profits cannot be trusted, no share can be valued
- So companies with sound results fell alongside the rest. This was a market-wide problem, not a company one
- The episode fell 33.63% from the March high to the October low. This day sits in the middle of it
- A law tightening accountability for company accounts passed around this time, and the distrust began to lift
Sources
Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.