| Wall Street Crash of 1929 | 24 Oct 1929 | | Lasting over 4 years, the bursting of the speculative bubble in shares led to further selling as people who had borrowed money to buy shares had to cash them in, when their loans were called in. Also called the Great Crash or the Wall Street Crash, leading to the Great Depression. | |
| Recession of 1937–38 | 1937 | | Lasting around a year, this share price fall was triggered by an economic recession within the Great Depression and doubts about the effectiveness of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy. | |
| Kennedy Slide of 1962 | 28 May 1962 | | Also known as the 'Flash Crash of 1962' | [6] |
| Brazilian Markets Crash of 1971 | Jul 1971 | | Lasting through the 1970s and early-1980s, this was the end of a boom that started in 1969, compounded by the 1970s energy crisis coupled with early 1980s Latin American debt crisis. | [7][8][9] |
| 1973–74 stock market crash | Jan 1973 | | Lasting 23 months, dramatic rise in oil prices, the miners' strike and the downfall of the Heath government. | |
| Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash | Aug 1982 | | | |
| Black Monday | 19 Oct 1987 | | Infamous stock market crash that represented the greatest one-day percentage decline in U.S. stock market history, culminating in a bear market after a more than 20% plunge in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Among the primary causes of the chaos were program trading and illiquidity, both of which fueled the vicious decline for the day as stocks continued lower even as volume grew lighter. Today, circuit breakers are in place to prevent a repeat of Black Monday. After a 7% drop, trading would be suspended for 15 minutes, with the same 15 minute suspension kicking in after a 13% drop. However, in the event of a 20% drop, trading would be shut down for the remainder of the day. | |
| Rio de Janeiro Stock Exchange Crash | Jun 1989 | | Rio de Janeiro Stock Exchange Crash, due to its weak internal controls and absence of credit discipline, that led to its collapse, and from which it never recovered | [10][11][12] |
| Friday the 13th mini-crash | 13 Oct 1989 | | Failed leveraged buyout of United Airlines causes crash | |
| Early 1990s recession | Jul 1990 | | Iraq invaded Kuwait in July 1990, causing oil prices to increase. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 18% in three months, from 2,911.63 on July 3 to 2,381.99 on October 16,1990. This recession lasted approximately 8 months. | |
| Japanese asset price bubble | 1991 | | Lasting approximately twenty years, through at least the end of 2011, share and property price bubble bursts and turns into a long deflationary recession. Some of the key economic events during the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble include the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Dot-com bubble. In addition, more recent economic events, such as the late-2000s financial crisis and August 2011 stock markets fall have prolonged this period. | |
| Black Wednesday | 16 Sep 1992 | | The Conservative government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after they were unable to keep sterling above its agreed lower limit. | |
| 1997 Asian financial crisis | 2 Jul 1997 | | Investors deserted emerging Asian shares, including an overheated Hong Kong stock market. Crashes occur in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Philippines, and elsewhere, reaching a climax in the October 27, 1997 mini-crash. | |
| October 27, 1997, mini-crash | 27 Oct 1997 | | Global stock market crash that was caused by an economic crisis in Asia. | |
| 1998 Russian financial crisis | 17 Aug 1998 | | The Russian government devalues the ruble, defaults on domestic debt, and declares a moratorium on payment to foreign creditors. | |
| Dot-com bubble | 10 Mar 2000 | | Collapse of a technology bubble. | |
| Economic effects arising from the September 11 attacks | 11 Sep 2001 | | The September 11 attacks caused global stock markets to drop sharply. The attacks themselves caused approximately $40 billion in insurance losses, making it one of the largest insured events ever. | |
| Stock market downturn of 2002 | 9 Oct 2002 | | Downturn in stock prices during 2002 in stock exchanges across the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. After recovering from lows reached following the September 11 attacks, indices slid steadily starting in March 2002, with dramatic declines in July and September leading to lows last reached in 1997 and 1998. See stock market downturn of 2002. | |
| Chinese stock bubble of 2007 | 27 Feb 2007 | | The SSE Composite Index of the Shanghai Stock Exchange tumbles 9% from unexpected selloffs, the largest drop in 10 years, triggering major drops in worldwide stock markets. | [13][14][15] |
| United States bear market of 2007–2009 | 11 Oct 2007 | | From their peaks in October 2007 until their closing lows in early March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 all suffered declines of over 50%, marking the worst stock market crash since the Great Depression era. | [16][17] |
| Financial crisis of 2007–08 | 16 Sep 2008 | | On September 16, 2008, failures of large financial institutions in the United States, due primarily to exposure of securities of packaged subprime loans and credit default swaps issued to insure these loans and their issuers, rapidly devolved into a global crisis resulting in a number of bank failures in Europe and sharp reductions in the value of equities (stock) and commodities worldwide. The failure of banks in Iceland resulted in a devaluation of the Icelandic krna and threatened the government with bankruptcy. Iceland was able to secure an emergency loan from the IMF in November. Later on, U.S. President George W. Bush signs the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to purchase failing bank assets. Had disastrous effects on the world economy along with world trade. | [18][19] |
| 2009 Dubai debt standstill | 27 Nov 2009 | | Dubai requested a debt deferment following its massive renovation and development projects, as well as the Great Recession. The announcement caused global stock markets to drop. | [20] |
| European sovereign debt crisis | 27 Apr 2010 | | Standard & Poor's downgraded Greece's sovereign credit rating to junk four days after the activation of a €45-billion EU–IMF bailout, triggering the decline of stock markets worldwide and of the Euro's value, and furthering a European sovereign debt crisis. | [21][22][23] |
| 2010 flash crash | 6 May 2010 | | The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst intra-day point loss, dropping nearly 1,000 points before partially recovering. | [24] |
| August 2011 stock markets fall | 1 Aug 2011 | | S&P 500 entered a short-lived bear market between 2 May 2011 (intraday high: 1,370.58) and 04 October 2011 (intraday low: 1,074.77), a decline of 21.58%. The stock market rebounded thereafter and ended the year flat. | [25][26][27] |
| 2015–16 Chinese stock market crash | 12 Jun 2015 | | China stock market crash started in June and continues into July and August. In January 2016, Chinese stock market experienced a steep sell-off which set off a global rout. | [28][29][30][31][32][33] |
| 2015–16 stock market selloff | 18 Aug 2015 | | The Dow Jones fell 588 points during a two-day period, 1,300 points from August 18–21. On Monday, August 24, world stock markets were down substantially, wiping out all gains made in 2015, with interlinked drops in commodities such as oil, which hit a six-year price low, copper, and most of Asian currencies, but the Japanese yen, losing value against the United States dollar. With this plunge, an estimated ten trillion dollars had been wiped off the books on global markets since June 3. | [34][35][36] |
| 2018 cryptocurrency crash | 20 Sep 2018 | | The S&P 500 index peaked at 2930 on its September 20 close and dropped 19.73% to 2351 by Christmas Eve. Bitcoin price peaked on 17 Dec '17, then fell 45% on 22nd Dec '17. The DJIA falls 18.78% during roughly the same period. Shanghai Composite dropped to a four-year low, escalating their economic downturn since the 2015 recession. | [37][38] |
| 2020 stock market crash | 24 Feb 2020 | | The S&P 500 index dropped 34%, 1145 points, at its peak of 3386 on February 19 to 2237 on March 23. This crash was part of a worldwide recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. |