On the top of the world

Year 2000-01
The US stock index, NASDAQ peaked on March 10, 2000 to 5048 points, more than double its value just a year before. Few reasons contributing to the severe market fall after March 10 were -

1. A multimillion dollar sell order was placed on several large internet companies like IBM, Dell, Cisco on March 13 (Monday). People suggest that it was a coincidence but one can never be sure. The markets tanked 4% on opening to 4879, the largest pre-market fall in an year.
   
2. The second major reason could be sited as the declaration by the Federal court that Microsoft was indeed a monopoly. This shook the confidence people had in software companies.
3. The third reason was reduced expenditure by US companies as the Y2K issue got resolved for most of the companies by the start of year 2000. This caused a drop in revenue for a lot of software companies.

All these reasons combined together to bring around 9% drop in NASDAQ in 6 days and NASDAQ closed at 4580 on March 15. By 2001, the markets fell in full flow and several companies burnt their venture capital never actually recording any profit. This crash caused individual investors to flee the markets with their investments, looking for a better investment opprtunity.