S&P 500 · October 9, 2002
The dot-com bust hits the S&P 500
-49.15%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
637 trading days · 2000-03-24 → 2002-10-09
back to the old high on 2007-05-30
What happened that day?
- From the March 2000 peak to the October 2002 low the S&P 500 fell 49.15% — 637 trading days
- It started with the internet bubble deflating, but it did not stay a tech problem
- Money that companies had overspent on equipment and acquisitions during the boom came back as a burden, and investment collapsed
- The 11 September 2001 attacks froze spending and travel, sealing the recession
- Accounting frauds at Enron and WorldCom came out, and people stopped trusting reported earnings at all
- The old high returned on 30 May 2007 — just before the financial crisis began
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.