S&P 500 · October 15, 1998

A cut between meetings

+4.17%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The rally after LTCM

midway through · 1998-08-31 → 1998-11-23, +24.12% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The S&P 500 rose 4.17% to close at 1,047.49
The Federal Reserve cut rates on a day that was not a scheduled meeting — an unusual way to do it
The unusualness was itself the message: things were not calm enough to wait for the next meeting
Behind it was the credit squeeze that had run since that summer. After Russia defaulted, a large hedge fund collapsed and everyone who lends money pulled back at once
A group of banks had absorbed that fund in September. The tension did not lift, and this cut is what cut the knot
From a summer drop of 19.34%, the market went on to set new highs within two months

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.