Nasdaq · March 1, 2002
The day the doubt spread to others
+4.11%
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?
- The Nasdaq rose 4.11% on the day
- The manufacturing survey returned to expansion for the first time in months, a signal that the economy really was recovering
- The market in this period moved between two stories — the economy is improving, and company books cannot be trusted
- After the large energy company went bankrupt in January, suspicion spread that other firms had inflated profits the same way
- So even good economic data did not produce lasting gains
- This rise carried only to mid-March before slipping back
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 written from the sources listed above.