WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · August 5, 2008

Up because oil turned down

+2.87%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Global Financial Crisis bear market

midway through · 2007-10-09 → 2009-03-09, -56.78% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 5 August 2008 the S&P 500 rose 2.87%
  • Oil had been falling since its July peak and dropped below 120 dollars that day
  • Cheaper oil eases the inflation constraint, which gives the Fed room to cut again
  • At its meeting the same day the Fed held rates but gave more weight to the risk to growth
  • One of the two things pressing on the market all summer had loosened
  • The other was far larger. The crisis exploded a month later
  • The index sat 47.26% below its peak in this stretch

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.