S&P 500 · March 16, 2020
COVID-19 Crash
-11.98%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The COVID crash
near the end of it · 2020-02-19 → 2020-03-23, -33.92% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- Sunday 15 March 2020 — the Fed held an emergency meeting, cut rates to effectively zero, and announced large-scale asset purchases
- Normally that lifts stocks. Instead the S&P 500 fell 11.98% the next day
- Markets read it not as support but as a signal: if the Fed is meeting on a weekend, things are far worse than we thought
- Over that same weekend, countries were starting to close borders and lock down cities
- Defining feature was speed. From the 19 February record high to the 23 March bottom, it lost 33.92% in a little over a month (far faster than 1987 or 2008)
- Recovery was equally fast — with sustained stimulus, the index regained its high by August that year
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.