S&P 500 · October 9, 1974

Four sessions past the bear-market bottom

+4.60%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Six years back from the oil shock

early in it · 1974-10-03 → 1980-07-17, +94.99% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The S&P 500 rose 4.6% on the day. 3 October had been the bottom of this bear market
From the January 1973 high to that bottom the index lost close to half its value, the deepest fall since the Depression
Two things had come together. Middle Eastern producers restricted oil exports and the price quadrupled, while inflation ran into double digits
Inflation is normally met by raising rates, which makes a weak economy weaker. This was the first time the world faced rising prices and a failing economy at once
Shares did especially badly because inflation eats the present value of future profits
The recovery that began here ran to 1980, but the inflation problem itself was not solved until 1982

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.