Nasdaq · January 26, 2004
The ten months that began when the war did
+69.40%
trough back to the old high
221 trading days · 2003-03-11 → 2004-01-26
What happened that day?
- From the low on 11 March 2003 to the high on 26 January 2004, the Nasdaq rose 69.4% over 221 trading days
- It was the largest and longest advance since the dot-com collapse, and the index nearly doubled across it
- Shares rose once the war started. Not because bad news is good, but because decisions postponed during the waiting could finally be made
- Rates were at the floor. That June the Fed cut its policy rate to one percent, the lowest in forty-five years at the time
- Earnings genuinely improved. Technology firms that had survived since 2000 by working down inventory began taking orders again
- With tax cuts and rock-bottom rates together, the riskier the asset the more it rose. Loss-making companies gained most across this stretch
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.