Nasdaq · August 11, 2011
The week that alternated every other day
+4.69%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Five months around a downgrade
midway through · 2011-04-29 → 2011-10-03, -18.71% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq rose 4.69% on the day
- That week alternated between heavy falls and heavy gains every other session. This was the fourth reversal
- There was no single trigger, beyond jobless claims coming in slightly better
- This pattern appears when neither buyers nor sellers have conviction. Small news then moves prices a lot
- In Europe at the same time rumours circulated about a French bank, and days later several countries banned short selling in financial shares
- The size of the swings is itself the information here, more than their direction
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.