WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · March 13, 2003

Betting the war would be short

+4.81%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The ten months that began when the war did

early in it · 2003-03-11 → 2004-01-26, +69.40% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq rose 4.81% on the day. The low of this phase had come two days earlier
  • Shares rising as war became imminent looks strange, but it happens often
  • What had weighed on the market for months was not the war but the not knowing. Once a date is effectively set, that part goes away
  • There was also a bet that it would be short. The memory of the earlier Gulf war ending in weeks was still fresh
  • From this day the Nasdaq rose for ten months, into January of the next year

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.