WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · November 13, 2008

The intraday reversal

+6.92%

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 November 2008 the S&P 500 rose 6.92% in a single day
  • Intraday the index dropped to a multi-year low, then turned and closed sharply higher
  • Reversals like that happen when everyone who wanted to sell has sold. With no supply left, small buying moves the price a long way
  • The government was also settling on using rescue funds to recapitalise banks around this time
  • It was not the bottom, though. Days later carmaker failure fears sent it down hard again
  • The final low came four months later on 9 March 2009

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.