WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · January 17, 2008

When the word recession appeared

-2.91%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Global Financial Crisis bear market

early in it · 2007-10-09 → 2009-03-09, -56.78% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 17 January 2008 the S&P 500 fell 2.91%
  • Large bank results were arriving in bulk and the losses were larger again
  • Manufacturing data and housing starts were deteriorating alongside them
  • Through 2007 this had been a housing problem. In 2008 it began spreading into the whole economy
  • No single trigger can be pinned to this day
  • In this stretch the index was 18.64% below its peak
  • The US recession was later dated as having begun in December 2007

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.