S&P 500 · January 4, 1988
The first session of the year after Black Monday
+3.59%
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?
- The S&P 500 rose 3.59% on the day, the first session of 1988
- It came three months after Black Monday had taken more than twenty percent off the index in a day
- Yet the economy did not break. Earnings held up and unemployment stayed low
- The crash failed to spread into the real economy largely because the Fed supplied money at once, saying the very next day that it would provide whatever was needed
- This is where 1929 differs. Then the central bank tightened instead, and the crash became a decade-long depression
- Regaining the August 1987 high took until July 1989
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.