Nasdaq · January 21, 2009

A snapback after a heavy session

+4.60%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

A halving that took seventeen months

near the end of it · 2007-10-31 → 2009-03-09, -55.63% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The Nasdaq rose 4.6% to close at 1,507.07. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
The session before, this market had fallen hard on fears about bank losses. This day is closer to a snapback than a turn
It was also the week large technology companies reported quarterly results, and several came in better than feared
In a crisis, big up-days and big down-days arrive back to back. That is the mark of a market with no settled direction
The episode fell 41.98% from the late-September 2008 high to the March 2009 low. This is a bounce inside it
The real bottom was seven more weeks away

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.