Nasdaq · May 26, 2009
The day consumer confidence jumped
+3.45%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Thirteen months that doubled off the bottom
early in it · 2009-03-09 → 2010-04-23, +99.44% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 26 May 2009 — the Nasdaq rose 3.45% to close at 1,750.43. No single cause can be pinned to the day
- That morning the American monthly consumer-confidence reading came in sharply higher. It is published at the end of each month
- In a crisis that number matters, because it separates spending that stopped out of panic from spending that stopped for lack of income
- The index had climbed a long way off the March low over two and a half months, and the following weeks were a pause
- House-price readings were also falling more slowly around then, which read as a bottom coming closer
- The giveback in this episode ran only 5.63%, from early May to 13 May — short and shallow
- The recovery continued, but employment did not grow for a long time afterwards
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.