Record day for stocks

The thing about moves like yesterday’s 9.5% S&P 500 (SPX) rally is that you can count them on the fingers of one hand—literally. And you could be missing a few fingers, since the SPX has had only two other up days bigger than Wednesday since it expanded to 500 stocks in 1957.

Over the past 68 years, the index has rallied 7% or more in a day only seven other times. And only five of those occurred within three days after it closed at its lowest level in at least 220 trading days, as was the case with Wednesday’s move:

As always, the problem with having so few examples is that it’s difficult to draw reliable conclusions from them. But as was the case with the SPX’s two-day, 10.5% sell-off at the end of last week, what little history there is suggests that moves like yesterday’s almost always occur during periods of extreme market stress. The dates of the other 7% up days: October 21, 1987, October 13, 2008, October 28, 2008, March 13, 2020, and March 24, 2020.   

In other words, the five similar rally days were actually part of three larger market episodes: the 1987 market crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2020 COVID sell-off.

Again, today’s market may behave quite differently, but it’s worth noting that these big rally days didn’t always signal the end of market volatility. Not only did the SPX close lower the next day in four of five cases, it was also lower (i.e., below the close of the rally day) 10 trading days later four times.¹ The only exception was March 24, 2020, which effectively marked the end of the COVID “bear market.”

Today’s numbers include (all times ET): CPI (8:30 a.m.), weekly jobless claims (8:30 a.m.), EIA Natural Gas Report (10:30 a.m.).

Today’s earnings include: CarMax (KMX).

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¹ Figures reflect S&P 500 (SPX) closing price data, 1957-2025. Supporting document available upon request.