On April 4, 2025, China answered President Donald Trump's new tariffs with tariffs of its own, and the S&P 500 fell 6%, PBS NewsHour reported. It was the end of the index's worst week since the pandemic.
Plenty of investors saw a bargain. Say one of them put $10,000 into the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, the biggest fund that tracks the index, at that day's close.
That buyer's story matters again this week. On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 4.4%, its worst day since that April afternoon. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.5% and is now in a correction, more than a tenth below its October record.
Anyone buying the dip now is making the April buyer's bet. Here is how it went for them, and for a buyer who made the same bet in September 2008.
Underwater for four days
The April buyer had two more bad days. By the close on April 8, the $10,000 was worth $9,826.
Then the White House paused most of the new tariffs for 90 days. The S&P 500 jumped 9.5% on April 9, its biggest one-day gain since 2008, Russell Investments noted, and the buyer was back above water.
A year after the purchase, the investment was worth $13,190. At Thursday's close, after the crash, it was worth $14,747, with dividends reinvested.
The buyer who waited two years
On Sept. 29, 2008, the House of Representatives voted down the $700 billion bank rescue plan, NPR reported. The S&P 500 fell 8.8% that day, twice Thursday's drop.
A buyer who put $10,000 into the same fund at that close got a bounce too. The index rose 5.4% the next day as hopes grew for a revised bill.
The bounce did not hold. By March 9, 2009, the $10,000 was worth $6,165. A year after the purchase, it was still worth less than the buyer paid.
The investment last traded below its purchase price on Aug. 31, 2010, almost two years in. Five years after the purchase, it was worth $16,799.
Most crash days since 1970
Thursday's drop fits a pattern. We grouped every day since 1970 when the S&P 500 fell 4% or more into 17 earlier selloffs, counting drops less than three months apart as one.
A year after the first big drop, the index was higher in 11 of the 17. But in nine of them, the buyer first watched it fall at least another 10%. In 2008, that further fall reached 43%.
The deciding fact was jobs
The difference between the two buyers was jobs. In one case employers were still hiring, and in the other they were cutting.
When the 2008 buyer bought, employers had cut jobs in every month of that year, about 1.6 million in all, Labor Department figures now show. Unemployment stood at 6.1% and was climbing.
When the April 2025 buyer bought, employers were still hiring. Payrolls grew by 108,000 that month, by the department's current count.
The exception is 2000. A buyer on the dot-com crash day of April 14, 2000 saw hiring hold up for the rest of that year. Payrolls turned down in 2001 anyway, and that buyer's fund did not stay above its purchase price until October 2011.
Which one is this?
On the jobs test, this week looks like 2025, not 2008. The Labor Department said Friday that employers added 165,000 jobs in October, more than twice what economists expected, Yahoo Finance reported. Unemployment was 4.1%.
Profits are rising as well. With 60% of S&P 500 companies reporting, third-quarter earnings were up 30.2% from a year earlier, FactSet said on Oct. 30.
The worry on Thursday was something else. Investors sold because they feared the Democratic sweep of Congress could slow the building of AI data centers, Yahoo Finance reported. Economist Ed Yardeni called the drop an overreaction and kept his S&P 500 target.
The strong jobs number cuts both ways. Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger wrote that it solidifies a Federal Reserve rate increase in December.
Stocks bounced on Friday. The S&P 500 closed up 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.1%, with chip stocks up 4.2%. Both the 2008 buyer and the 2025 buyer saw a bounce like that in their first days. One day settles nothing.
Explain the financial terms
A fiscal quarter is a three-month period in the company's reporting year.
What to watch
The next jobs report is due in early December, with the Fed's meeting the following week. Watch whether payrolls keep growing, and whether companies trim their data center spending plans on the earnings calls still to come.
Past crashes are not a forecast for this one, and nothing here is advice to buy or sell.
How we did it
Both buyers use the SPDR S&P 500 ETF's daily closes from Yahoo Finance with dividends reinvested, through Thursday, Nov. 5. The 17 selloffs use the S&P 500 index itself, without dividends, from 1970.
Jobs figures are the Labor Department's current, revised numbers, not the ones reported at the time. The October figure is from Friday's release.