S&P 500 · November 18, 1974
A relapse after the bottom
-3.67%
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 fell 3.67% to close at 69.27. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
- The low of this episode had passed six weeks earlier, on 3 October. Days like this keep coming after a bottom
- 1974 was a year of fast-rising prices and a weakening economy — the combination where rates can be neither raised nor cut
- That autumn unemployment was climbing quickly and profit forecasts kept coming down
- You only know a bottom has passed afterwards. To anyone there at the time it was just another day of falling
- The episode fell 26.72% from the July high to the October low. The recovery carried into the following year
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.