S&P 500 · April 25, 2000

The day the equipment makers' numbers held

+3.33%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The dot-com bust hits the S&P 500

early in it · 2000-03-24 → 2002-10-09, -49.15% over the whole period

What happened that day?

25 April 2000 — the S&P 500 rose 3.33%
First-quarter results from chip and telecom-equipment makers came in strong. That read as proof the April crash had not been about earnings
The market's logic ran like this: internet companies do not make money, but the companies selling them equipment really do
The logic held for a while. The catch was that internet companies that cannot raise money stop buying equipment
That link broke from the summer onward. At this point it was not yet visible
The Nasdaq rose close to twice as much the same day — a difference in how much tech each index carries
From the late-March high to the mid-April low the index fell 11.19%, only a fraction of the damage the Nasdaq took

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.