WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · April 10, 2014

The day expensive growth was sold at once

-3.10%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The climb back to the level of 2000

midway through · 2012-11-15 → 2015-04-23, +78.22% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq fell 3.1% on the day, the largest single-day drop of this advance
  • Shares in companies with little or no profit yet fell hardest, with biotech and internet names at the centre
  • Such shares are priced on distant future profits. A small move in rates swings their value a lot
  • The Fed was steadily reducing its bond buying that spring, and that shrinks the present value of distant profits
  • This was a fall caused by a change in how things were priced, not by any worsening at the companies
  • For the index as a whole the correction stayed shallow, because the large firms that actually earn held up

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.