S&P 500 · August 6, 1990
Four days after the invasion of Kuwait
-3.02%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Gulf War bear market
early in it · 1990-07-16 → 1990-10-11, -19.92% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The S&P 500 fell 3.02% on the day
- Iraq had invaded Kuwait four days earlier, and on this day the UN voted economic sanctions
- Between them the two countries hold a large share of world oil reserves, and the price rose fast
- The US economy was already sliding into recession that summer, and the oil shock landed on top of it
- The savings and loan clean-up was under way and the junk bond market had collapsed, so funding was hard to come by
- 11 October was the bottom of this phase, and recovery began with the war in January of the next year
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.