S&P 500 · January 24, 2003

January with a war coming

-2.92%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The 2002–07 recovery

early in it · 2002-10-09 → 2007-05-30, +97.00% over the whole period

What happened that day?

24 January 2003 — the S&P 500 fell 2.92% to close at 861.40. No single cause can be pinned to the day
The question that winter was whether a war would start in the Middle East. The timing shifted every week for months
An imminent war lifts the oil price and makes companies postpone investment. Both take profit forecasts down
Quarterly results were also concentrated in that week, and many companies were cutting their guidance
The next session fell as well. This was not a one-day reaction
From the late-November 2002 high to the 11 March low the index fell 14.71%
From late March, when the war actually began, the index rose instead. Clearing the uncertainty mattered more

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.