Key moments that rocked the stock market in 2020 and then recovered

Here are some of the key moments of a year when the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA took place,
+ 0.65%
end up with an annual profit of about 7%, despite the fact that they hit a bear market eight months ago. The S&P 500 index SPX,
+ 0.64%
posted a return of nearly 16% in 2020, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
+ 0.14%
rose 43.4% and the Russell 2000 index small capitalization RUT,
-0.26%
19% up on the year.

• January 2 was the first trading day in 2020 and the Dow posted a 330-point rise, seemingly unaware as the Chinese central bank increased stimulus measures amid the viral outbreak first reported in Wuhan and was just a glimpse of what it would become. the globe.

• Dow achieves a closing highlight on February 12. The S&P 500 ends at an all-time high on February 19.

• On Feb. 28, the Dow, S&P 500 suffers with its worst weekly decline since 2008, as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the central bank is “ closely monitoring ” the spread of the coronavirus.

• On March 3, the Fed announced a half-percentage point rate cut, half an hour after the start of the trading session, saying that while the fundamentals of the economy remain strong, the “coronavirus carries evolving risks to economic activity” . (A number of other central banks around the world have also cut interest rates)

• On March 11, the Dow ends in bear market territory for the first time in more than a decade, after the World Health Organization has labeled the global spread of COVID-19 a pandemic.

• March 12 marks its worst day since the 1987 crash as risks from virus-induced recessions increase (volatility in the markets began to trigger limit-down trading to soften the sell-off.)

• On March 15, the Fed cuts interest rates by a full percentage point to nearly 0% on a Sunday evening and begins rolling out a number of programs aimed at stopping faltering credit markets and supporting the economy.

• On March 23, the stock market hit its lowest point of the pandemic era.

• March 26, investors take some comfort in the overnight passage of a historic $ 2 trillion economic stimulus effort on the same day that a report found that a record 3.28 million Americans had claimed unemployment benefits

• On April 3, stocks ended lower after the worst job report in 11 years, which showed 701,000 Americans lost their jobs in March.

• April 29 marks the largest decline in US gross domestic product since 2008. GDP, the official economic growth scorecard, contracted 4.8% year-on-year.

• May 25: George Floyd’s death sparks social unrest around the world.

• National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, says in June that a 128-month expansion – the longest dating back to 1854 – stalled in February and a recession began.

• June 5: Investors applaud a May jobs report that unexpectedly showed an increase of 2.5 million wages for non-farm businesses and a drop in the unemployment rate. The Dow was up nearly 830 points, or 0.3%, while the S&P 500 was up 2.6% and the Nasdaq Composite hit an intraday high.

• June 16: Data shows that sales at US retailers increased 17.7% in May as the economy began to reopen and weave its way out of what was likely the shortest and deepest recession in US history.

• Nov. 9: Trump’s vaccine tsar says first vaccine should be submitted for emergency permit around Thanksgiving

• November 15: Trump first acknowledges President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory – then says he is ‘admitting nothing’, repeating unfounded claim of ‘faked’ vote

• November 17: Moderna Inc. said his COVID-19 vaccine candidate met its primary endpoint in the first analysis of data from a phase 3 trial, demonstrating 94.5% efficacy

• December 3: UK approves Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

• Dec 11: FDA grants emergency authorization for Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

• December 18: FDA approves Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Quotes of the year:

“The coronavirus outbreak will be temporary and will not change the long-term improvement of the Chinese economy,” Pan Gongsheng, PBOC deputy governor, said at a news conference in February.

“I’m telling investors to hang around there because this is the opportunity,” Diane Jaffee, TCW’s senior portfolio manager, told MarketWatch in late February.

“Monetary policy is an unlikely cure for the coronavirus,” said Mike LaBella, head of investment strategy at QS Investors, a subsidiary of Legg Mason, in a statement in March when the Fed cut its first emergency interest rate in response to the coronavirus outbreak. days before the WHO declared the new strain of the coronavirus a pandemic.