S&P 500 · August 30, 1974
The summer after the president resigned
+3.09%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The 1973–74 oil shock bear market
near the end of it · 1973-01-11 → 1974-10-03, -48.20% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The S&P 500 rose 3.09% on the day
- Earlier that month the US president had resigned over the wiretapping scandal, the first time in the country's history
- Clearing political uncertainty usually lifts shares. Not this time — the index fell for another month and bottomed in October
- The reason is that the problem was not political. Oil and inflation were the real causes, and changing president did not change them
- Inflation was running at twelve percent. Money in a savings account lost that much of its value every year
- It is a stretch showing that a large political event does not always move a market
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.