WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · December 22, 2000

The year-end bounce

+7.56%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Nine months down without a rest

midway through · 2000-07-17 → 2001-04-04, -61.66% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 22 December 2000 the Nasdaq rose 7.56% in a single day
  • Profit warnings had poured out through December and the Nasdaq was deep in the hole
  • Expectation grew that the Fed would cut soon, and the market bounced
  • Year-end also brings tax-driven selling of losing positions, and once that is done the selling pressure disappears
  • With that supply cleared, modest buying moved prices a long way
  • The actual cut came two weeks later on 3 January 2001. The decline still ran into 2002

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.