WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · October 10, 2002

The bounce the day after the bottom

+4.42%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The first seven weeks off the bottom

early in it · 2002-10-09 → 2002-11-27, +33.55% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq rose 4.42% on the day
  • The previous day, 9 October, was the low of the entire dot-com collapse. From the March 2000 high the index had fallen to about a fifth of its value
  • There was no single trigger. Once everyone who wants to sell has sold, the same news moves prices the other way
  • What had been pressing on the market was accounting fraud. It was four months since a large telecom's books were exposed, and the distrust lingered
  • A bottom is only known to be a bottom afterwards. Whoever bought that day did not buy knowing it

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.