WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · May 10, 2010

The day Europe built a rescue fund

+4.81%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Two months of Greece and a flash crash

early in it · 2010-04-23 → 2010-07-02, -17.33% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq rose 4.81% on the day
  • Over the weekend European countries agreed a large fund to support members in trouble, with the IMF taking part alongside
  • The European Central Bank also began buying member states' bonds, something it had not done before
  • A country using the euro cannot print its own money and so cannot solve a debt problem alone. That is why a structure of mutual guarantee was needed
  • The previous week had brought the flash crash in the US on top of the Greek worry, and markets had been badly shaken
  • This deal also only bought time, and Europe's problem ran on for years

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.