S&P 500 · May 4, 2009
The week the test results leaked
+3.39%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Eighty percent in a year off the bottom
early in it · 2009-03-09 → 2010-04-23, +79.93% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 4 May 2009 the S&P 500 rose 3.39%
- The US government was due to publish its bank stress test results that week
- Ahead of it, reports said most banks would need relatively little extra capital
- The worst case had been nationalisation. If little capital is needed, there is no reason for it
- The point of the exercise was publishing the numbers. Once the not-knowing ends, so does the reason to assume the worst
- In this stretch the index was 27.62% below its peak
- After the results, the banks were able to raise capital in the market
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.