Nasdaq · March 18, 2008

The day of the big cut

+4.19%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

A halving that took seventeen months

early in it · 2007-10-31 → 2009-03-09, -55.63% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The Nasdaq rose 4.19% to close at 2,268.26
The Federal Reserve cut rates sharply at its scheduled meeting that day
Over the previous weekend a large investment bank, out of funding, had been sold cheaply to another bank, with the central bank standing behind the deal
So this cut read not as ordinary economic management but as holding up the financial system
Quarterly results from the big brokers came in better than feared the same day
The low of this episode had come eight days earlier, on 10 March. This is the bounce after it
The main act of the crisis was still that autumn. This rebound came about halfway through

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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.