S&P 500 · August 17, 1982
The day the bull market began
+4.76%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The 1982 Volcker pivot rally
early in it · 1982-08-12 → 1982-11-03, +39.49% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 17 August 1982 the S&P 500 rose 4.76% in a single day
- Five days earlier, 12 August, had been the low of the Volcker high-rate bear market
- That day a prominent bond analyst forecast that rates would fall sharply, and the market reacted explosively
- Rates were the only thing weighing on the market, so a claim that the premise was changing flipped the direction
- The Fed did in fact begin cutting around this time
- The advance from here undid the whole decline in three months and became the start of the bull market that ran into the 1990s
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.