S&P 500 · December 5, 2000

The day the chairman admitted the slowdown

+3.89%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The dot-com bust hits the S&P 500

early in it · 2000-03-24 → 2002-10-09, -49.15% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The S&P 500 rose 3.89% to close at 1,376.54
The chairman of the Federal Reserve said, in effect, that the economy had slowed noticeably
Bad news lifted prices for one reason: admitting weakness means rates can come down
The Nasdaq rose far more the same day. Rate-sensitive technology shares react first
The actual cut did not arrive until the following January. What rose here was the expectation
This episode fell 27.45% from the September 2000 high to the April 2001 low, and this is a bounce inside it
The decline continued after the cuts began. Rates only slow the pace at which a bubble empties

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.