Nasdaq · December 16, 2008
The day rates effectively hit zero
+5.41%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
A halving that took seventeen months
near the end of it · 2007-10-31 → 2009-03-09, -55.63% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq rose 5.41% on the day
- The Fed cut its policy rate to effectively zero, the first time in US history
- It also meant there was nowhere left to cut. So in the same announcement the Fed said it would buy government bonds and mortgage debt
- This is the point where policy shifted from lowering the price of money to supplying it directly. The method is called quantitative easing
- It became the standard tool of many central banks for more than a decade afterwards
- Shares did not bottom for another three months, though. Policy arriving does not turn prices at once
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.