WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · October 28, 2008

The biggest up day of the crisis

+10.79%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Global Financial Crisis bear market

near the end of it · 2007-10-09 → 2009-03-09, -56.78% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The S&P 500 rose 10.79% on the day, the second-largest single-day gain of the financial crisis
  • Expectations were high that the Fed would cut the next day, and that other central banks would move with it
  • The IMF had also agreed support for several countries in the preceding days
  • A jump like this is not a sign that things have improved. The steeper the decline, the more big up days appear inside it
  • Pressure to buy back what had been sold with borrowed shares widens the move on such days too
  • The index in fact fell for four more months, bottoming in March 2009

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.