Nasdaq · February 24, 2009

The word was: no nationalisation

+3.90%

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?

24 February 2009 — the Nasdaq rose 3.90%
What the market feared most in this stretch was nationalisation of the banks, which would wipe out the existing shares
That day the Fed chairman told Congress, in substance, that nationalisation was not the plan
One branch of the worst case closed off, bank stocks jumped, and the index followed
Still, no single cause for that one day could be pinned down. The market swung between good news and doubting the good news every few days
The index's real bottom came two weeks later, on 9 March
From the November 2008 high to the March 2009 low the index fell 28.73%

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.