Nasdaq · March 27, 1980
Credit controls and Silver Thursday
-24.91%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
33 trading days · 1980-02-08 → 1980-03-27
back to the old high on 1980-07-14
What happened that day?
- From the 8 February 1980 peak to the 27 March low the Nasdaq fell 24.91% — 33 trading days
- With inflation refusing to break, the Fed went beyond rate rises and imposed controls on credit cards and lending itself
- Once borrowing got hard, the people investing with borrowed money went first
- The low on 27 March is Silver Thursday. The Hunt brothers, who had been driving silver up to corner the market, could not meet a margin call and the price collapsed
- The brokerages that had lent to them were suddenly at risk too, and it nearly spread across the financial system
- The controls were lifted within months and the market recovered fast. The old high returned on 14 July
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.