September 17, 2001, six days after the attacks the pain is still insane. The wreckage of the World Trade Center represents the worst nightmare that the United States has ever experienced in their story. America tries to start living again. Shops, offices, hotels reopen. Wall Street also reopens after a five-day break, the longest stop since the First World War.
It is the first session after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The New York Stock Exchange is actually still closed to use, the Financial District almost inaccessible.
It is 9.33 on 17 September. On Wall Street, after two minutes of silence in honor of the victims, "God Bless America" resounds. Present are Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Senator Hillary Clinton. “I am grateful to America and the world because they are supporting the reopening of the market at the New York Stock ExchangeClinton commented. "I am absolutely confident in the American economy, I believe that the fundamentals of the economy are as good and strong today as they were last Monday." The fear for what will happen during the session is very high. There are fears that the market will react violently to the attacks with huge losses on the NYSE and Nasdaq stock exchanges.
The fears are confirmed over the next few hours. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges a whopping 684 basis points and closes at 8920,70 points. The session goes into history. The result indeed represents the largest point loss the Dow Jones has ever recorded during a single session, even if in percentage terms the blue chip index drops "only" 7,1%, much less than the -22,6% seen on Black Monday in 1987.
The Standard & Poor's 500 also turns deep red, losing 4,9% at the end of the day to 1,038.77 points, and the Nasdaq (-6,8% to 1,579.55 points). Such low levels have not been seen since the autumn of 1998, considered the beginning of the longest rally in the American market.
At the end of what will be remembered as one of the worst weeks in NYSE history, the Dow Jones finds itself at 8.236 points (-14%). Huge losses also for Standard and Poor's which on Friday 21 September marks -11,6%. According to estimates, in just five days, 1,4 trillion dollars go up in smoke.
