WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · May 21, 2012

One day after six straight losing weeks

+2.46%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Spanish banks and a second Greek election

near the end of it · 2012-03-26 → 2012-06-01, -12.01% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq rose 2.46% on the day — the largest single gain of this correction
  • **No single cause for that day has been pinned down.** What is established is that it came after six consecutive losing weeks
  • The news out of Europe had not changed. The price had — the same headlines read differently once a lot has already been taken out
  • A bounce like this does not mean the direction turned. The bottom of this stretch came ten days later
  • Across the correction as a whole the index lost 12% in a little over two months

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.