WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · July 15, 1996

The first correction before the bubble

-3.92%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The summer 1996 tech correction

near the end of it · 1996-06-05 → 1996-07-24, -16.55% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq fell 3.92% on the day, near the bottom of this correction
  • Internet-related shares had been rising hard since 1995, starting with the listing of a web browser company
  • The correction began when several technology firms reported numbers below expectations during the earnings season
  • With prices having run ahead, even a small miss produced a large fall
  • The decline lasted two months, and the Nasdaq rose for four more years to its March 2000 peak
  • Corrections like this happened repeatedly while the bubble inflated. Each recovery became the argument for the next advance

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.