S&P 500 · December 24, 2018
The Q4 2018 selloff
-19.78%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
65 trading days · 2018-09-20 → 2018-12-24
back to the old high on 2019-04-23
What happened that day?
- From the 20 September 2018 peak to the 24 December low the S&P 500 fell 19.78% — 65 trading days
- The Fed had raised rates four times that year and signalled more to come in the next
- The US and China started taxing each other's goods in earnest. Companies with production spread across both took the direct hit
- When the Fed hiked again at its December meeting the market was badly disappointed — growth was visibly slowing, so why keep tightening
- It bottomed on Christmas Eve. The Fed then signalled it would pause, and the direction changed
- The old high returned on 23 April 2019 — four 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.