Nasdaq · August 24, 2015
Down a thousand points in the first minutes
-3.82%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
China's slowdown and the oil crash
early in it · 2015-07-20 → 2016-02-11, -18.24% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- Monday, 24 August 2015 — the Nasdaq fell 3.82%
- For the first few minutes after the open it was down far more than it closed. Prices vanished for a moment and came back
- When orders arrive all at once, the bids briefly empty out. Anyone selling into that gap sells at an absurd price
- It started in China. Chinese stocks had lost more than a third in a few weeks that summer, and in August Beijing pushed the yuan lower
- A weaker yuan helps exports, but the market read it as a signal that China's economy was that bad
- Two sessions later a Fed official said the case for a September rate rise had weakened, and the index bounced hard
- From the late-July high to the 25 August low the index fell 13.65%
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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.