WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · August 31, 1998

Russia's Default and LTCM — Nasdaq

-8.56%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Russia shock on the Nasdaq

midway through · 1998-07-20 → 1998-10-08, -29.55% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • 31 August 1998 — Nasdaq Composite fell 8.56%. The Russia and LTCM shock hit tech harder than the broad market
  • Fell 29.55% from peak — a substantial correction by the standards of the time
  • What matters is what followed: the Fed cut rates three times while containing the crisis
  • Crisis management, but it also released cheap money into a market where internet companies were already the story
  • From autumn 1998 to spring 2000 the Nasdaq rose at a pace unlike anything before it
  • The measures taken to prevent one crisis became fuel for the next bubble

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.