Nasdaq · August 27, 1990

A bounce a month into the Gulf crisis

+3.81%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The junk bond bust and the Gulf War

near the end of it · 1989-10-09 → 1990-10-16, -33.00% over the whole period

What happened that day?

27 August 1990 — the Nasdaq rose 3.81%. No single cause for that one day could be pinned down
The index had fallen hard four sessions earlier. It had been shaking since Iraq invaded Kuwait at the start of August
The invasion sent oil prices up. Dearer oil raises company costs and leaves consumers less to spend
The American economy was already cooling. The junk-bond market had frozen and the savings-and-loan cleanup was under way
Daily swings get large in a stretch like this. When nobody knows where prices belong, small news moves them a lot
The bounce did not end the episode. The index's low came on 16 October
From the mid-July high to the October low the index fell 30.71%

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.