WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · October 3, 2011

The bottom of the stretch

-2.85%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The downgrade and Europe's second wave

near the end of it · 2011-04-29 → 2011-10-03, -19.39% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 3 October 2011 the S&P 500 fell 2.85%. This was the low of the stretch
  • The day before, Greece had announced it would miss its deficit targets — the conditions attached to its bailout
  • Missing them means the next tranche does not arrive, which brings default closer
  • From the April high to here the index had fallen 19.39%
  • The bottom of a stretch is often the day the worst news lands, because after that there is less left to go wrong
  • From this day the index rose 42.75% over eighteen months
  • In this stretch it was 18.77% below its peak

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.