Nasdaq · August 23, 1990
The day oil hit its highest in a decade
-3.90%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The junk bond bust and the Gulf War
near the end of it · 1989-10-09 → 1990-10-16, -33.00% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nasdaq fell 3.9% on the day — the second-worst single session of this decline
- Iraq had invaded Kuwait three weeks earlier, and oil jumped that day to its highest level since the early 1980s
- The United States had called up reserves the day before — a signal that this would not end diplomatically
- Higher oil raises company costs and shrinks household budgets. The US economy was already turning down that year
- The Nasdaq had by then been falling for nearly a year on the collapse of the junk bond market. The war scare landed on top of that
- The decline ended in mid-October, and the index climbed steeply over the following six months
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.