S&P 500 · February 5, 2018
The day the calm-market bet blew up
-4.10%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- On 5 February 2018 the S&P 500 fell 4.1%
- A US wage growth report days earlier set it off — if prices rise, rates rise, and the market did that arithmetic
- Then one product lit the fire. Listed products that paid off while markets stayed calm had become popular
- When markets moved, those products had to sell all at once to cover their losses. The fall fed the selling and the selling fed the fall
- The fear gauge (VIX) more than doubled in a day. One of the best-known products was wound up and ceased to exist
- The Dow fell 1,175 points that day — the largest point drop at the time
- From the peak the index was down 10.16%, and took half a year to get back
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.