S&P 500 · October 13, 2008
The day governments backstopped the banks
+11.58%
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 13 October 2008 the S&P 500 rose 11.58% in a single day
- The week before had been the worst of the crisis. After Lehman, banks had stopped lending to each other and the system was close to seizing up
- Over the weekend Britain and the major European states announced together that they would inject capital into banks and guarantee bank debt. Britain alone put £37bn into three banks
- America's own capital injection was announced a day later, on 14 October. New York rose on this day by reacting to Europe moving first
- The signal mattered more than the sums. Once it was clear the banks would not be allowed to fail, the funding markets that had frozen on mutual distrust started moving again
- This was not the end of the crisis. The index drifted lower for months and only bottomed in March 2009
- The biggest up-days tend to land inside crashes. The bigger the fear, the bigger the snap-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.