Nasdaq · April 19, 1999
Internet stocks collapsed in a day and came back in three
-5.57%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq fell 5.57% on the day. It lost 138 points — **the second-largest point drop in the index's history to that date**
- Internet-related shares had run up ferociously over the preceding months. Companies trading at dozens of times their sales were common
- The internet sector index fell close to a fifth over these few days — far harder than the market as a whole
- When a price rests on expectation rather than earnings, a wobble in the expectation is by itself a reason to sell. That was this day
- **And within three sessions it was back.** The close on 22 April was higher than before the fall
- That snap-back is what characterises the period: buyers stepped in the moment prices dropped, which is why the bubble ran another year
- The real collapse came after March of the following year. That one took two years, not three days
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.