Nasdaq · September 21, 2001
A summer slide and a September shock
-38.49%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
81 trading days · 2001-05-22 → 2001-09-21
still below that peak today
What happened that day?
- From the high on 22 May 2001 to the low on 21 September, the Nasdaq fell 38.49% over 81 trading days
- The summer showed that the spring rally had rested on nothing. Companies kept cutting their forecasts
- The US economy had in fact been in recession since that March, as was confirmed later
- After the attacks of 11 September the New York exchanges closed for four days, the longest shutdown since the world wars
- Trading resumed on the 17th and fell for four straight sessions, bottoming on the 21st
- What mattered was less the attack itself than a shock landing on an economy already weakening. Airlines, travel and insurance were hit directly
- The rally that began at this bottom ran to the end of the year
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.