A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of
stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
prices across a major cross-section of a
stock market, resulting in a significant loss of
paper wealth. Crashes are driven by
panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often follow
speculation and
economic bubble
An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be ...
s.
A stock market crash is a
social phenomenon where external economic events combine with
crowd psychology in a
positive feedback
Positive feedback (exacerbating feedback, self-reinforcing feedback) is a process that occurs in a feedback loop which exacerbates the effects of a small disturbance. That is, the effects of a perturbation on a system include an increase in th ...
loop where selling by some market participants drives more market participants to sell. Generally speaking, crashes usually occur under the following conditions: a prolonged period of rising stock prices (a
bull market) and excessive economic optimism, a market where
price–earnings ratios exceed long-term averages, and extensive use of
margin debt and leverage by market participants. Other aspects such as wars, large corporate hacks, changes in federal laws and regulations, and natural disasters within economically productive areas may also influence a significant decline in the stock market value of a wide range of stocks. Stock prices for corporations competing against the affected corporations may rise despite the crash.
There is no numerically specific definition of a stock market crash but the term commonly applies to declines of over 10% in a
stock market index over a period of several days. Crashes are often distinguished from
bear markets (periods of declining stock market prices that are measured in months or years) as crashes include
panic selling and abrupt, dramatic price declines. Crashes are often associated with bear markets; however, they do not necessarily occur simultaneously.
Black Monday (1987), for example, did not lead to a bear market. Likewise, the bursting of the
Japanese asset price bubble occurred over several years without any notable crashes. Stock market crashes are not common.
Crashes are generally unexpected. As
Niall Ferguson stated, "Before the crash, our world seems almost stationary, deceptively so, balanced, at a set point. So that when the crash finally hits — as inevitably it will — everyone seems surprised. And our brains keep telling us it’s not time for a crash."
Examples
Tulip Mania
Tulip Mania (1634-1637), in which some single tulip bulbs allegedly sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled
artisan
An artisan (from french: artisan, it, artigiano) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, ...
, is often considered to be the first recorded
economic bubble
An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be ...
.
Panic of 1907
In 1907 and in 1908, stock prices fell by nearly 50% due to a variety of factors, led by the manipulation of
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish ...
stocks by the
Knickerbocker Trust Company. Shares of
United Copper rose gradually up to October, and thereafter crashed, leading to panic.
Several investment trusts and banks that had invested their money in the stock market fell and started to close down. Further bank runs were prevented due to the intervention of
J. P. Morgan. The panic continued to 1908 and led to the formation of the
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
in 1913.
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The economy grew for most of the
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the ...
. It was a technological golden age, as innovations such as the radio, automobile, aviation, telephone, and the
electric power transmission
Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this movement form a ''transmission network''. This i ...
grid were deployed and adopted. Companies that had pioneered these advances, including
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and
General Motors, saw their stocks soar. Financial corporations also did well, as
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for ...
bankers
floated mutual fund companies (then known as
investment trusts) like the
Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation. Investors were infatuated with the returns available in the stock market, especially by the use of
leverage through
margin debt (i.e., borrowing money from your stockbroker to finance part of your purchase of stocks, using the bought securities as collateral).
On August 24, 1921, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indexe ...
(DJIA) was at 63.9. By September 3, 1929, it had risen more than sixfold to 381.2. It did not regain this level for another 25 years. By the summer of 1929, it was clear that the economy was contracting, and the stock market went through a series of unsettling price declines. These declines fed investor anxiety, and events came to a head on October 24, 28, and 29 (known respectively as
Black Thursday,
Black Monday, and
Black Tuesday).
On Black Monday, the DJIA fell 38.33 points to 260, a drop of 12.8%. The deluge of selling overwhelmed the
ticker tape
Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called ...
system that normally gave investors the current prices of their shares.
Telephone lines and telegraphs were clogged and were unable to cope. This information vacuum only led to more fear and panic. The technology of the New Era, previously much celebrated by investors, now served to deepen their suffering.
The following day, Black Tuesday, was a day of chaos. Forced to liquidate their stocks because of
margin calls, overextended investors flooded the exchange with sell orders. The Dow fell 30.57 points to close at 230.07 on that day. The glamour stocks of the age saw their values plummet. Across the two days, the DJIA fell 23%.
By the end of the weekend of November 11, 1929, the index stood at 228, a cumulative drop of 40% from the September high. The markets rallied in succeeding months, but it was a temporary recovery that led unsuspecting investors into further losses. The DJIA lost 89% of its value before finally bottoming out in July 1932. The crash was followed by the
Great Depression, the worst
economic crisis of modern times, which plagued the stock market and Wall Street throughout the 1930s.
October 19, 1987
The mid-1980s were a time of strong economic optimism. From August 1982 to its peak in August 1987, the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indexe ...
(DJIA) rose from 776 to 2722. The rise in market indices for the 19 largest markets in the world averaged 296% during this period. The average number of shares traded on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
rose from 65 million shares to 181 million shares.
The crash on October 19, 1987,
Black Monday, was the climactic culmination of a market decline that had begun five days before on October 14. The DJIA fell 3.81% on October 14, followed by another 4.60% drop on Friday, October 16. On Black Monday, the DJIA plummeted 508 points, losing 22.6% of its value in one day. The
S&P 500 Index dropped 20.4%, falling from 282.7 to 225.06. The
NASDAQ Composite lost only 11.3%, not because of restraint on the part of sellers, but because the
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
market system failed. Deluged with sell orders, many stocks on the NYSE faced
trading halts and delays. Of the 2,257 NYSE-listed stocks, there were 195 trading delays and halts during the day. The NASDAQ market fared much worse. Because of its reliance on a "market making" system that allowed
market maker
A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the '' bid–ask spread'', or ''turn.'' The benefit to the firm is that ...
s to withdraw from trading, liquidity in NASDAQ stocks dried up. Trading in many stocks encountered a pathological condition where the
bid price for a stock exceeded the
ask price. These "locked" conditions severely curtailed trading. On October 19, trading in
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
shares on the NASDAQ lasted a total of 54 minutes.
The crash was the greatest single-day loss that Wall Street had ever suffered in continuous trading up to that point. Between the start of trading on October 14 to the close on October 19, the DJIA lost 760 points, a decline of over 31%.
In October 1987, all major world markets crashed or declined substantially. The
FTSE 100 Index
The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie" , is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with (in principle) the highest mar ...
lost 10.8% on that Monday and a further 12.2% the following day. The least affected was Austria (a fall of 11.4%) while the most affected was Hong Kong with a drop of 45.8%. Out of 23 major industrial countries, 19 had a decline greater than 20%.
Despite fears of a repeat of the
Great Depression, the market rallied immediately after the crash, posting a record one-day gain of 102.27 the very next day and 186.64 points on Thursday, October 22. It took only two years for the Dow to recover completely; by September 1989, the market had regained all of the value it had lost in the 1987 crash. The DJIA gained 0.6% during calendar year 1987.
No definitive conclusions have been reached on the reasons behind the 1987 Crash. Stocks had been in a multi-year bull run and market
price–earnings ratios in the U.S. were above the post-war average. The S&P 500 was trading at 23 times earnings, a postwar high and well above the average of 14.5 times earnings.
Herd behavior
Herd behavior is the behavior of individuals in a group acting collectively without centralized direction. Herd behavior occurs in animals in herds, Pack (canine), packs, bird flocks, fish schools and so on, as well as in humans. Voting, Demonst ...
and psychological
feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...
loops play a critical part in all stock market crashes but analysts have also tried to look for external triggering events. Aside from the general worries of stock market overvaluation, blame for the collapse has been apportioned to such factors as
program trading,
portfolio insurance and
derivatives
The derivative of a function is the rate of change of the function's output relative to its input value.
Derivative may also refer to:
In mathematics and economics
*Brzozowski derivative in the theory of formal languages
*Formal derivative, an ...
, and prior news of worsening
economic indicators (i.e. a large U.S. merchandise
trade deficit
The balance of trade, commercial balance, or net exports (sometimes symbolized as NX), is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports over a certain time period. Sometimes a distinction is made between a balance ...
and a falling
U.S. dollar, which seemed to imply future interest rate hikes).
One of the consequences of the 1987 Crash was the introduction of the circuit breaker or
trading curb on the NYSE. Based upon the idea that a cooling-off period would help dissipate
panic selling, these mandatory market shutdowns are triggered whenever a large pre-defined market decline occurs during the
trading day.
Crash of 2008–2009
On September 15, 2008, the
bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of
Merrill Lynch along with a liquidity crisis of
American International Group
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. , AIG companies employed 49,600 people.https://www.aig.com/content/dam/aig/amer ...
, all primarily due to exposure to packaged subprime loans and credit default swaps issued to insure these loans and their issuers, rapidly devolved into a global crisis. This resulted in several
bank failures in Europe and sharp reductions in the value of stocks and commodities worldwide. The failure of banks in Iceland resulted in a devaluation of the
Icelandic króna and threatened the government with bankruptcy. Iceland obtained an emergency loan from the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...
in November. In the United States, 15 banks failed in 2008, while several others were rescued through government intervention or acquisitions by other banks. On October 11, 2008, the head of the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...
(IMF) warned that the world financial system was teetering on the "brink of systemic meltdown".
The economic crisis caused countries to close their markets temporarily.
On October 8, the
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
n stock market halted trading, after a 10% drop in one day.
''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...
'' of London reported that the meltdown was being called the ''Crash of 2008'', and older traders were comparing it with Black Monday in 1987. The fall that week of 21% compared to a 28.3% fall 21 years earlier, but some traders were saying it was worse. "At least then it was a short, sharp, shock on one day. This has been relentless all week." Other media also referred to the events as the "Crash of 2008".
From October 6–10, 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed lower in all five sessions. Volume levels were record-breaking. The DJIA fell over 1,874 points, or 18%, in its worst weekly decline ever on both a points and percentage basis. The S&P 500 fell more than 20%. The week also set 3 top ten NYSE Group Volume Records with October 8 at #5, October 9 at #10, and October 10 at #1.
Having been suspended for three successive trading days (October 9, 10, and 13), the Icelandic stock market reopened on 14 October, with the main index, the
OMX Iceland 15, closing at 678.4, which was about 77% lower than the 3,004.6 at the close on October 8. This reflected that the value of the three big banks, which had formed 73.2% of the value of the OMX Iceland 15, had been set to zero.
On October 24, 2008, many of the world's stock exchanges experienced the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices. In the U.S., the DJIA fell 3.6%, although not as much as other markets. The
United States dollar
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
and
Japanese yen soared against other major currencies, particularly the
British pound and
Canadian dollar, as world investors sought safe havens. Later that day, the deputy governor of the
Bank of England,
Charlie Bean, suggested that "This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
By March 6, 2009 the DJIA had dropped 54% to 6,469 from its peak of 14,164 on October 9, 2007, over a span of 17 months, before beginning to recover.
Covid-19 pandemic (2020)
During the week of February 24–28, 2020, stock markets dropped as the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
spread globally. The FTSE 100 dropped 13%, while the DJIA and S&P 500 Index dropped 11-12% in the biggest downward weekly drop since the
financial crisis of 2007–2008
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of ...
.
On Monday, March 9, 2020, after the launch of the
2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war, the FTSE and other major European stock market indices fell by nearly 8%. Asian markets fell sharply and the S&P 500 Index dropped 7.60%. The Italian FTSE MIB fell 2,323.98 points, or 11.17%.
On March 12, 2020, a day after US President
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of ...
announced a travel ban from Europe, stock prices again fell sharply. The DJIA declined 9.99% — the largest daily decline since
Black Monday (1987) — despite the
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
announcing it would inject $1.5 trillion into money markets. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq each dropped by approximately 9.5%. The major European stock market indexes all fell over 10%.
On March 16, 2020, after it became clear that a
recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...
was inevitable, the DJIA dropped 12.93%, or 2,997 points, the largest point drop since
Black Monday (1987), surpassing the drop in the prior week, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.32%, and the S&P 500 Index dropped 11.98%.
By the end of May 2020, the stock market indices briefly recovered to their levels at the end of February 2020.
In June 2020 the Nasdaq surpassed its pre-crash high followed by the S&P 500 in August and the Dow in November.
Mathematical theory
Random walk theory
The conventional assumption is that stock markets behave according to a random
log-normal distribution
In probability theory, a log-normal (or lognormal) distribution is a continuous probability distribution of a random variable whose logarithm is normally distributed. Thus, if the random variable is log-normally distributed, then has a normal ...
. Among others, mathematician
Benoit Mandelbrot suggested as early as 1963 that the statistics prove this assumption incorrect. Mandelbrot observed that large movements in prices (i.e. crashes) are much more common than would be predicted from a log-normal distribution. Mandelbrot and others suggested that the nature of market moves is generally much better explained using
non-linear analysis and concepts of
chaos theory. This has been expressed in non-mathematical terms by
George Soros in his discussions of what he calls reflexivity of markets and their non-linear movement. George Soros said in late October 1987, 'Mr.
Robert Prechter's reversal proved to be the crack that started the avalanche'.
Self-organized criticality
Research at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
suggests that there is evidence that the frequency of stock market crashes follows an inverse cubic
power law. This and other studies such as
Didier Sornette's work suggest that stock market crashes are a sign of
self-organized criticality in financial markets.
Lévy flight
In 1963, Mandelbrot proposed that instead of following a strict
random walk
In mathematics, a random walk is a random process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space.
An elementary example of a random walk is the random walk on the integer number line \mathbb ...
, stock price variations executed a
Lévy flight. A Lévy flight is a random walk that is occasionally disrupted by large movements. In 1995, Rosario Mantegna and Gene Stanley analyzed a million records of the
S&P 500 Index, calculating the returns over a five-year period. Researchers continue to study this theory, particularly using
computer simulation
Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...
of crowd behavior, and the applicability of models to reproduce crash-like phenomena.
Result of investor imitation
In 2011, using statistical analysis tools of
complex systems, research at the
New England Complex Systems Institute found that the panics that lead to crashes come from a dramatic increase in
imitation
Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our culture. ...
among investors, which always occurred during the year before each market crash. When investors closely follow each other's cues, it is easier for panic to take hold and affect the market. This work is a mathematical demonstration of a significant advance warning sign of impending market crashes.
Trading curbs and trading halts
One mitigation strategy has been the introduction of
trading curbs, also known as "circuit breakers", which are a
trading halt in the cash market and the corresponding trading halt in the derivative markets triggered by the halt in the cash market, all of which are affected based on substantial movements in a broad market indicator. Since their inception after
Black Monday (1987), trading curbs have been modified to prevent both speculative gains and dramatic losses within a small time frame.
United States
There are three thresholds, which represent different levels of decline in the
S&P 500 Index: 7% (Level 1), 13% (Level 2), and 20% (Level 3).
* If Threshold Level 1 (a 7% drop) is breached before 3:25pm, trading halts for a minimum of 15 minutes. At or after 3:25 pm, trading continues unless there is a Level 3 halt.
* If Threshold Level 2 (a 13% drop) is breached before 1 pm, the market closes for two hours. If such a decline occurs between 1 pm and 2 pm, there is a one-hour pause. The market would close for the day if stocks sank to that level after 2 pm
* If Threshold Level 3 (a 20% drop) is breached, the market would close for the day, regardless of the time.
France
For the
CAC 40 stock market index in France, daily price limits are implemented in cash and derivative markets. Securities traded on the markets are divided into three categories according to the number and volume of daily transactions. Price limits for each security vary by category. For instance, for the most liquid category, when the price movement of a security from the previous day's closing price exceeds 10%, trading is suspended for 15 minutes. If the price then goes up or down by more than 5%, transactions are again suspended for 15 minutes. The 5% threshold may apply once more before transactions are halted for the rest of the day. When such a suspension occurs, transactions on options based on the underlying security are also suspended. Further, when stocks representing more than 35% of the capitalization of the CAC40 Index are halted, the calculation of the CAC40 Index is suspended and the index is replaced by a trend indicator. When stocks representing less than 25% of the capitalization of the CAC40 Index are halted, trading on the derivative markets are suspended for half an hour or one hour, and additional margin deposits are requested.
See also
*
Behavioral finance
*
Business cycle
Business cycles are intervals of expansion followed by recession in economic activity. These changes have implications for the welfare of the broad population as well as for private institutions. Typically business cycles are measured by exami ...
*
Economic bubble
An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be ...
*
Economic collapse
Economic collapse, also called economic meltdown, is any of a broad range of bad economic conditions, ranging from a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment (such as the Great Depression of the 1930s), to a ...
*
Financial market
*
Financial stability
*
Financial crisis
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...
*
List of stock market crashes and bear markets
*
Market trend
*
Mass hysteria
*
Modeling and analysis of financial markets
*
Stock market bubble
*
Flash crash
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Le Bris, David. "What is a market crash?" ''The Economic History Review''
{{Financial crises
Business failures