Nasdaq · January 2, 2009

The first session of 2009 (Nasdaq)

+3.50%

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?

2 January 2009 — the Nasdaq rose 3.50% to close at 1,632.21, the first session of the year. No single cause can be pinned to the day
2008 had taken a large piece out of this index — its worst year since the dot-com collapse
At the start of a year, money rebalancing between assets comes in, and what fell most tends to rise first
There was also an expectation that the incoming administration would soon produce a large stimulus package
But the bottom was not in. The index kept falling until 9 March
Given the nature of the crisis, it took months more before the hope of January showed up in the numbers
From the mid-September 2008 high to the 9 March low the index fell 44.21%

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.