S&P 500 · January 21, 2009
January, waiting for a bank plan
+4.35%
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 21 January 2009 the S&P 500 rose 4.35%
- A new president had been inaugurated the day before, and a plan to deal with the banks was expected soon
- Bank shares had collapsed the previous day and taken the index down hard, so the retrace was large
- Talk of nationalising the banks kept circulating — the worst case for shareholders
- Hope and fear were alternating on a daily basis
- No single trigger can be pinned to this day
- In this stretch the index was 44.24% 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.