S&P 500 · December 14, 1987

Ten days past the bottom

+2.92%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Back from Black Monday

early in it · 1987-12-04 → 1989-07-26, +50.97% over the whole period

What happened that day?

14 December 1987 — the S&P 500 rose 2.92% to close at 242.19. No single cause can be pinned to the day
The low of this episode was ten days behind, on 4 December. The aftershocks of the October crash ended there
The one-day fall of 19 October was the largest in this index's history. The two months after it were aftershocks
Behind December's turn was the Fed keeping money plentiful; it had said it would supply liquidity from the day after the crash
It was also becoming clear that the real economy had not stopped. The crash happened in finance and the factories kept running
From the late-August high to the 4 December low the index fell 33.51%
Getting back to the pre-crash high took almost two years

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.