Nasdaq · August 14, 2002
The day executives signed the books
+5.12%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Nine months when the books could not be trusted
near the end of it · 2002-01-04 → 2002-10-09, -45.90% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq rose 5.12% on the day
- It was the deadline for executives of large US companies to certify in writing that their financial statements were true
- Ahead of it the market had worried about how many firms would step forward and say they could not
- In the event most filed on time. It was better than the worst imagining
- The power of a measure like this is less in what it screens out than in fixing where responsibility lies. Sign a false number and the individual is liable
- The accounting distrust began to lift from around this day
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.