Nasdaq · February 21, 2002
The winter nobody trusted the books
-3.34%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Nine months when the books could not be trusted
early in it · 2002-01-04 → 2002-10-09, -45.90% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- February 21, 2002 — the Nasdaq fell 3.34% to 1,716.24. No single cause for the day could be pinned down
- This was after the accounting fraud at a large energy company had come out. The question going around was which name was next
- It had already dropped hard two sessions earlier, bounced once, then broke again
- The close was the lowest since October 31, 2001 — back near the lows that followed September
- From January 4 to June 21 the episode ran -30.03%
- This stretch fell less on bad earnings than on distrust of the numbers. The law rewriting the accounting rules came only that summer
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.