S&P 500 · January 28, 1982
The winter high rates held the economy down
+2.75%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Volcker rate shock
near the end of it · 1980-11-28 → 1982-08-12, -27.11% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The S&P 500 rose 2.75% on the day
- The Fed chair of the day had pushed rates to nearly twenty percent to break inflation
- Prices did turn, but the economy suffered badly. Unemployment passed ten percent
- The market of this period watched only for when rates would come down. It was a stretch where the price of money, not earnings, set share prices
- This day's gain came from talk that cuts were near
- The actual turn came that August. The Fed changed direction and an eighteen-year bull market began
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.