WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · October 17, 2001

Doubting whether the recovery was real

-4.40%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The three and a half months after the attacks

early in it · 2001-09-21 → 2002-01-04, +44.70% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq fell 4.4% on the day
  • It was a pause in the rally that had run since late September
  • Third-quarter results were coming in and most were poor, confirming that things had been bad before the attacks
  • At the same time letters containing anthrax were being sent in the US, enough to close congressional buildings
  • In that state nobody can calculate how far spending will fall. It was a hard period in which to price anything
  • The rally itself continued, though, and the index rose into year end

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.