WhyItDropped

S&P 500 · March 7, 2022

The day oil reached toward 130

-2.95%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The 2022 inflation bear market

early in it · 2022-01-03 → 2022-10-12, -25.43% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 7 March 2022 the S&P 500 fell 2.95%
  • Word came that the US and Europe were discussing a ban on Russian oil imports
  • Crude spiked toward 130 dollars a barrel intraday, its highest since 2008
  • Dearer oil means higher inflation, and higher inflation means more rate rises. That is bad for stocks twice over
  • It also leaves consumers less to spend on anything else, which weighs on the economy itself
  • The war reached share prices through this inflation channel, not through the fighting
  • In this stretch the index was 23.55% below its peak

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.