WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · September 8, 1998

The Fed hints at a cut

+5.09%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The rally after LTCM

early in it · 1998-08-31 → 1998-11-23, +24.12% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 8 September 1998 the S&P 500 rose 5.09% in a single day
  • Eight days earlier, on 31 August, the Russia-default decline had bottomed
  • In a speech the Fed chair referred to global economic risks and hinted at a rate cut
  • Until then the Fed had talked as if it set policy on US inflation alone. Citing world conditions was the change
  • It did cut three times over the following two months
  • The old high returned on 23 November, and the move ran into the final phase of the dot-com bubble

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.