Data story · Stocks
The 2020 stock market crash, in colour.
In four weeks of February and March 2020, the typical company in Huezle’s stocks data went from up 1.4% for the year to down 29.1%. By December it was up 23.7%. What happened in between split the strips into three shapes.
Every strip on this page is a real Stocks strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Stocks.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one company’s 2020, one band per week from January on the left to December on the right. A band is the running year-to-date return at the end of that week: green is positive YTD returns, red is negative YTD returns, near-white is flat for the year. The colour is at full strength from 65% up or down.
Every number on this page comes from the 103 companies in Huezle’s 2020 data, a curated list of well-known names rather than the whole market. It describes what happened and is not investment advice.
The crash in one number
Take the middle company of the 103 in each week. In the week ending 21 February it was up 1.4% for the year. By the week ending 20 March it was down 29.1%, and 45 of the 103 were more than 30% below where they started. Only four were up for the year that week. The middle company was back to flat in July, and 77 of the 103 ended the year higher than they began.
Shape one: the crash hardly touched them
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
Zoom was above its January price at every weekly close of 2020, and up 94% in the same week the middle company was down 29%. It ended the year up 401%.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
Tesla shows how fast the crash moved: up 103% for the year on 21 February, 3.5% down four weeks later, and up 697% by December. The white notch is the only sign of March on the whole strip.
Shape two: red in March, green by December
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
This is the commonest shape in the data. Apple was 22.7% down on 20 March, back to flat in May and up 80% at the end of the year.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
Crocs is the most extreme recovery: 74.4% down in March, still red until September, and up 48.9% by December. Its strip and Apple’s both end green but get there very differently, which is the kind of difference a round asks you to read.
Shape three: they never recovered that year
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
Cruise lines, airlines, oil companies and cinemas stayed red. Carnival fell further than anything else in the data, 82.8% down in the week ending 3 April, and ended the year down 56.1%.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
AMC Theatres has the strangest strip of all. Most companies hit bottom in March; AMC’s lowest close of the year was its last one, down 70.9%, after a year in which most cinemas spent months shut.
How the returns are measured. Each band compares a weekly closing price with the last weekly close of 2019. Prices are adjusted for splits and dividends, so Apple’s four-for-one split in August does not show as a crash, and a dividend counts as part of the return.
For how the other nine years compare, see the best and worst performing stocks. For how quickly a lead can collapse in sport, the greatest Premier League title races reads the same way. The other 97 companies of 2020 are left for you in the Stocks category.
Huezle draws one company’s year as a strip and asks which company it is. 2020 is a good year to start.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
How much did stocks fall in the 2020 crash?
Among the 103 well-known companies in Huezle’s data, the middle one was down 29.1% for the year at the close of the week ending 20 March 2020, and 45 of them were down more than 30%.
Which stocks went up during the 2020 crash?
Of the 103 companies in the data, only Zoom, Moderna, Netflix and Domino’s were up for the year at the close on 20 March 2020. Zoom was up 94%.
Which stocks did not recover in 2020?
Cruise lines, airlines, oil companies and cinemas. Carnival ended 2020 down 56.1% and AMC Theatres down 70.9%, its lowest close of the year.
More guides
- The best performing stock of the year rarely does it twice.What kind of company tops a year, and how last year’s winner does next, across ten years of about 110 household-name stocks, drawn week by week as strips of colour.
- The greatest Premier League title races, matchday by matchday.Premier League title races since 1995-96 as strips of colour: late swings, wire-to-wire champions, Leicester in 2015-16 and the leaders who let it slip.
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
Now try naming one yourself.
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