S&P 500 · February 4, 2010
The day Greece first mattered
-3.11%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Eighty percent in a year off the bottom
near the end of it · 2009-03-09 → 2010-04-23, +79.93% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 4 February 2010 the S&P 500 fell 3.11%
- Early that year it emerged that Greece's deficit was far larger than reported
- Greece uses the euro, so it cannot print its way out. Default became a real possibility
- If one country defaults inside the euro, the next question is who is next. Portugal and Spain were named
- US markets fell hard because of exposure through European banks and the risk to global growth
- This problem shook markets repeatedly for nearly three years
- In this stretch the index was 8.13% below its peak
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.