Nasdaq · October 3, 1974
The oil shock and the Nasdaq
-59.90%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
436 trading days · 1973-01-11 → 1974-10-03
back to the old high on 1978-09-07
What happened that day?
- From the January 1973 peak to the October 1974 low the Nasdaq fell 59.9% — 436 trading days
- The trigger was war in the Middle East cutting off oil exports and sending crude prices up
- Even then the Nasdaq held smaller, growth-oriented companies. Those are the first to get cut in a downturn, so the fall was deeper
- Stagflation — rising prices with a shrinking economy — left nowhere obvious to hide
- Political chaos piled on when the US president resigned in 1974
- The old high returned on 7 September 1978
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.