Nasdaq · December 8, 1980
The winter rates went past twenty
-3.52%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- On 8 December 1980 the Nasdaq fell 3.52%
- US bank lending rates were passing twenty percent, the highest on record
- The Fed was squeezing the quantity of money to break inflation, and rates spiked as a result
- When borrowing costs that much, the reason to own shares thins out. A bank deposit paid better
- No single trigger can be pinned to this day
- In this stretch the index was 9.32% below its peak
- That squeeze produced a recession the following 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.