WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · January 29, 2009

When the plan would not arrive

-3.31%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Global Financial Crisis bear market

near the end of it · 2007-10-09 → 2009-03-09, -56.78% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 29 January 2009 the S&P 500 fell 3.31%
  • A bank plan was said to be coming, but no detail was arriving
  • Jobless claims and durable goods orders both worsened sharply around the same time
  • When an awaited plan does not appear, the market treats that as bad news — it reads as an inability to produce one
  • The first plan, announced in February, was judged short on detail and the index fell hard again
  • No single trigger can be pinned to this day
  • In this stretch the index was 41.73% below its peak

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.