S&P 500 · April 1, 2020
The day lockdown looked like lasting
-4.41%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The COVID rebound
early in it · 2020-03-23 → 2020-08-18, +51.51% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The S&P 500 fell 4.41% on the day
- The US government extended its lockdown guidance to the end of April. Until then there had been talk of easing around Easter
- Around the same time the government published projections for deaths, and the numbers were large. The market had to recalculate the scale of the thing
- It also came after several days of rising from the 23 March bottom, so a give-back was due
- What the market watched daily here was the rate of increase in cases. That rate sets the length of the lockdown, and the lockdown sets how long companies must survive
- Days later, signs that the rate was bending produced another large gain
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.