S&P 500 · November 15, 1991
The day Washington reached for credit card rates
-3.66%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- On 15 November 1991 the S&P 500 fell 3.66% — its steepest drop in two years
- Two days earlier the US Senate had passed a bill capping the interest rate on credit cards
- Card interest was a large share of bank earnings at the time. A cap would simply remove it
- Bank and consumer finance shares cratered first, and the index followed them down
- The bigger issue was elsewhere: it read as Washington starting to set prices in the market directly
- The bill never took effect, and prices came back
- Peak to trough it was 5.58%
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.