Nasdaq · April 20, 1992
The spring the biotech bubble deflated
-2.47%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The 1992 growth-stock correction
midway through · 1992-02-12 → 1992-06-26, -15.05% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq fell 2.47% on the day
- Biotech shares had risen hard through 1991 on hopes that genetic technology would produce new medicines
- The trouble was that most of them had nothing to sell yet. Prices reflected in advance the success of drugs that might appear years later
- Through 1992 trial failures accumulated and regulatory review tightened, and the expectation broke
- The pattern repeats here too: a technology takes hold while only a few companies make money from it
- The correction ran to June, and recovery began once the election had passed
Sources
Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.