History
Standard & Poor's introduced its first stock index in 1923. Before 1957 its primary daily stock market index was the "S&P 90", a value-weighted index based on 90 stocks. Standard & Poor's also published a weekly index of 423 companies. The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957. Technology has allowed the index to be calculated and disseminated in real time. The S&P 500 is widely employed as a measure of the general level of stock prices, as it includes both growth stocks and the generally less volatile value stocks.
The index reached an all-time intraday high (which was not exceeded for over seven years) of 1,552.87 in trading on March 24, 2000, during the dot-com bubble, and then lost approximately 50% of its value in a two-year bear market, spiking below 800 points in July 2002 and reaching a low of 768.63 intraday on October 10, 2002 during the stock market downturn of 2002. The S&P 500 remained below its year-2000 all-time high somewhat longer than the popular Dow Jones Industrial Average and the more comprehensive Wilshire 5000. However, on May 30, 2007, the S&P 500 closed at 1,530.23 to set its first all-time closing high in more than seven years. The highest point reached was 1,565.15 on October 9, 2007.
In mid-2007 difficulties stemming from subprime mortgage lending began spreading to the wider financial sector, resulting in the second bear market of the 21st century. The resulting crisis became acute in September 2008, ushering in a period of unusual volatility, encompassing record 100-point moves in both directions and reaching the highest levels since 1929. On November 20 2008, the index closed at 752.44, its lowest since early 1997. A modest recovery the following day still left the index down 45.5% for the year. This year-to-date loss was the greatest since 1931, when the broad market declined more than 50%; the total losses that ushered in the Great Depression exceeded 80% over a three-year period. The market continued to decline between late 2008 and early 2009 surrounding the events involving the financial crisis of 2008, reaching a nearly 13-year closing low at 676.53 on March 9, 2009. Subsequently, the index recovered sharply with Federal Reserve quantitative easing (QE) to close at 1,206.07 on December 1, 2010, up over 78% from the low but still down by more than 23% from the 2007 high; this respite has been alternately characterized as heralding a return to economic growth, or a significant counter-trend bear market rally. After a sharp summer correction of an early 150-point gain in 2011, the S&P 500 closed above 1,400 on March 15, 2012 at 1,402.60, and after again correcting about 10%, reached its highest levels since December 2007 with the announcement of QE3 on September 13, 2012, closing at 1,459.99 after this the index peaked at 1,474.51 intraday on September 14.This was the highest peak since December 31 ,2007
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