Nasdaq · February 11, 2016
China's slowdown and the oil crash
-18.24%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
143 trading days · 2015-07-20 → 2016-02-11
back to the old high on 2016-08-05
What happened that day?
- From the July 2015 peak to the February 2016 low the Nasdaq fell 18.24% — 143 trading days
- China's growth was visibly slowing, and a sudden yuan devaluation in August 2015 shook global markets
- As Chinese demand fell, oil and other commodities collapsed. Crude went from over $100 a barrel to under $30
- Cheap oil is good for consumers, but for energy companies that had borrowed to drill it meant default risk
- On top of that the Fed raised rates in December 2015 for the first time since the financial crisis
- China announced stimulus, oil found a floor, and the market recovered. The old high returned on 5 August 2016
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.