S&P 500 · April 3, 2001

One session before the low

-3.44%

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?

3 April 2001 — the S&P 500 fell 3.44%. No single cause for that one day could be pinned down
The next session, 4 April, was the episode low. This was the day before the bottom
Technology companies were cutting guidance one after another. Prices fell first; the earnings confirmed it afterwards
A decline that began on the Nasdaq had reached the S&P 500 — by then the index carried that much tech
The Fed had been cutting since January. Prices kept falling anyway, because the problem was earnings, not the price of money
From the December 2000 high to the April 2001 low the index fell 20.07%
The session right after the low brought a rebound of more than four percent

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.