S&P 500 · October 3, 2011
The downgrade and Europe's second wave
-19.39%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
108 trading days · 2011-04-29 → 2011-10-03
back to the old high on 2012-02-24
What happened that day?
- From the high on 29 April 2011 to the low on 3 October, the S&P 500 fell 19.39% over 108 trading days
- All summer, the US Congress fought over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Without it, the government could not pay its debts
- A deal was reached in early August, and days later the US lost its top credit rating for the first time
- When the asset everyone treats as safest is shaken, the yardstick for every calculation shakes with it
- At the same time Italian and Spanish yields spiked and people began asking whether the euro could break
- This stretch came not from a weakening US economy but from politics and Europe
- This high was recovered in February 2012
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.