Nasdaq · January 17, 1991
The day the war started and shares rose
+2.90%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Nasdaq's Gulf War rebound
midway through · 1990-10-16 → 1991-04-02, +50.95% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq rose 2.9% on the day, when coalition forces began bombing Iraq
- War starting looks like a reason for shares to fall, and they rose instead. What had pressed on the market for months was not the war but not knowing when or how
- Once the bombing began and the early fighting was seen to be one-sided, oil fell sharply in a single day
- Fear over the oil price had weighed on the economy for the six months since the invasion of Kuwait. With that lifted, prices came back fast
- The bottom of this phase had come the previous October, and the advance from there ran to April
- The pattern repeats here — the deepest falls come while things are uncertain and are given back once the event arrives
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.