Nasdaq · October 7, 2008
The week when whatever could be sold was sold
-5.80%
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 fell 5.8% on the day
- There was no single piece of news. Almost every session that week fell hard
- In a stretch like this people sell not from judgement but from circumstance. Anyone who bought with borrowed money is forced to sell as prices drop
- So the better assets go first, because what has a ready price turns into cash fastest
- It was three weeks after Lehman Brothers failed, and prices kept falling even after the government's rescue bill had passed
- The shortage was not of money but of trust in each other. A bill does not fix that directly
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.