WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · March 16, 2020

COVID-19 Crash — Nasdaq

-12.32%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The COVID crash on the Nasdaq

near the end of it · 2020-02-19 → 2020-03-23, -30.12% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • 16 March 2020 — Nasdaq Composite fell 12.32%, one day after the Fed's emergency cut
  • Peak-to-trough decline was 30.12% — actually shallower than the S&P 500's
  • Contrary to the assumption that technology stocks would fall hardest
  • The reason was the demand lockdowns created. Remote work, online shopping, video calls and cloud were the businesses of the index's largest members
  • The pandemic was simultaneously a threat and a tailwind, and within weeks the market began pricing the second half of that
  • The point where this era's winners and losers separated

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.