WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · March 5, 2009

Two days from the bottom

-4.25%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Global Financial Crisis bear market

near the end of it · 2007-10-09 → 2009-03-09, -56.78% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 5 March 2009 the S&P 500 fell 4.25%
  • A major US bank's shares fell to around a dollar. The same company had traded above fifty a few years earlier
  • General Motors received an audit opinion questioning whether it could continue as a going concern around the same time
  • The index reached 683 that day, back at 1996 levels
  • A stretch where every piece of bad news arrives at once is often the end of one. The bottom came two days later
  • From the low on 9 March the index more than doubled over four years
  • The index sat 28.99% below its peak in this stretch

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.