S&P 500 · November 20, 2008
The day carmakers looked done
-6.71%
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 20 November 2008 the S&P 500 fell 6.71% in a single day
- The index fell to its lowest level of the crisis so far. The final low would come the following March
- US carmakers had said they were out of cash and asked for government help, and Congress was leaning toward refusing
- Cars are built on tens of thousands of supplier firms, so one failure stops manufacturing in a chain
- An argument broke out over why banks got public money and manufacturers should not, and the decision was postponed
- In December the government did provide emergency funding and the worst was avoided. The index low still came in March 2009
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.