Nasdaq · August 4, 1998

The summer Asia was still not over (Nasdaq)

-3.54%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Russia shock on the Nasdaq

early in it · 1998-07-20 → 1998-10-08, -29.55% over the whole period

What happened that day?

4 August 1998 — the Nasdaq fell 3.54% to close at 1,785.64. No single cause can be pinned to the day
The Asian crisis that began in Thailand the previous summer had not resolved, and Japan was going backwards
American companies had started writing lost Asian revenue into their results. Somebody else's problem had become their own numbers
Technology felt it directly. Asia both made the components and bought the machines
The decline deepened two weeks later when Russia declared it could not pay its debts
The low of this episode was 8 October. The Fed then cut three times and the recovery began
From the late-July high to the 8 October low the index fell 29.55%

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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.