Nasdaq · July 23, 2002
The summer distrust peaked
-4.18%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Nine months when the books could not be trusted
near the end of it · 2002-01-04 → 2002-10-09, -45.90% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq fell 4.18% to close at 1,229.05. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
- July 2002 came right after a large telecom's accounting fraud surfaced, with the question of whether any numbers could be trusted hanging over the market
- In such a stretch, companies with sound results fall too. The distrust is of the institution of accounts, not of one firm
- A day like this, from an already low base, is what capitulation looks like — only forced sellers left
- The episode fell 40.19% from the April high to the October low
- A law tightening accountability for company accounts passed around then, the distrust began to lift, and the bottom came on 9 October
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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.