WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · September 17, 2001

The day trading reopened after 9/11

-4.92%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The dot-com bust hits the S&P 500

midway through · 2000-03-24 → 2002-10-09, -49.15% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 17 September 2001 the S&P 500 fell 4.92% in a single day
  • New York markets had been shut for four days after the 11 September attacks and reopened that morning
  • The exchange buildings and communications lines sat next to the attack site, so reopening was physically impossible until then
  • Airlines, insurers and travel stocks fell hardest — businesses that had genuinely stopped
  • The shock landed on a market already more than a year into the dot-com decline
  • The low came four days later on 21 September, and the rebound after it was fast

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.