The biggest stock market crashes in history, ranked and explained

How do you rank the biggest stock market crashes in history?

Depth, speed, and recovery time give 3 fair yardsticks. Depth is the fall from the last high to the lowest close. Speed counts the days it took, from a single session to 3 years. Recovery measures the wait until the index regained its old peak. A crash that ranks first on one yardstick can rank last on another, so each entry below carries all 3.

This page orders the falls by depth, then adds speed and recovery in each section. Every figure comes from Federal Reserve History essays or from Wikipedia, consulted in October 2026. For the causes and warning numbers that apply to every case, return to the main stock market crash guide, or test your own exposure with the EQOS Asia method.

How far did the 1929 stock market crash take share prices?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 381.17 on 3 September 1929. Black Monday, 28 October, cut it by 12.82% and Black Tuesday, 29 October, by another 11.73%, so 2 sessions removed 23.05% of the index. The slide then ran for almost 3 years, down to 41.22 on 8 July 1932, an 89% loss from the peak. That is the deepest fall on this list.

Recovery took the longest as well. The Dow regained its September 1929 closing high only on 23 November 1954, which is 25 years later, according to the Federal Reserve History essay. The page on the 1929 stock market crash follows the black days one by one, and its own detail pages cover the causes and the Great Depression that followed.

What made Black Monday 1987 the largest one-day crash?

On 19 October 1987 the Dow lost 22.6%, or 508 points, in 1 session. Depth ranks below 1929, yet speed ranks first, because no other day on this list removes more than a fifth of an index. Black Monday 1987 serves as the reference case for a crash that happens inside a single trading day.

The Federal Reserve answered the next morning. On 20 October 1987 Chairman Alan Greenspan stated the Fed’s readiness to serve as a source of liquidity, and the 10 largest New York banks nearly doubled their lending to securities firms that week. The page on Black Monday 1987 covers the day in detail and the response that followed.

How deep was Japan’s stock market crash of 1990 compared with others?

The Nikkei 225 closed at 38,915.87 on 29 December 1989. By 11 March 2003 it had reached a post-bubble low of 7,862, a fall of about 80% that this page calculates from the 2 levels. The fall unfolded over 13 years, so speed ranks last on this list while depth ranks second.

Japan matters because the damage reached the economy as well. Wikipedia describes the decade after 1991 as the Lost Decade, and notes that Japanese GDP in 2017 stood only 2.6% above its 1997 level. The page on Japan’s stock market crash of 1990 explains how an asset price bubble formed and what the lost decades taught later investors.

What did the 2000 stock market crash do to the Nasdaq index?

The Nasdaq Composite peaked at 5,048.62 on 10 March 2000. By October 2002 it had fallen 78%, which gave up all the gains of the bubble years. Depth ranks third on this list, and the fall took about 2.5 years, a pace between the 1929 slide and the Japanese decline.

The index is heavy in technology shares, so the 78% describes a sector bubble more than the whole market. That context is why the 2000 stock market crash sits in its own page, which gives the Nasdaq fall in brief and keeps the focus on valuations rather than on a single trigger.

How many days did the 2020 covid crash need to lose a third?

The S&P 500 fell 34% from 3,386 on 19 February 2020 to 2,237 on 23 March 2020. That is 33 days, the shortest path to a fall of a third on this list. Depth ranks fifth, yet speed ranks near the top, which makes the covid stock market crash a useful test of how quickly a plan must work.

Speed shapes the response. A fall of 34% in 33 days leaves households and funds little time to adjust, so planning belongs before the fall begins. The page on the 2020 covid stock market crash tests the claim of a record pace. This page is general information, not investment advice.

How far did the 2015 China stock market crash spread across Asia?

The Chinese bubble popped on 12 June 2015. By 8 and 9 July the Shanghai market had fallen 30% over 3 weeks, and about 1,400 companies, more than half of those listed, filed for trading halts. On 24 August the Shanghai Composite fell another 8.48%, its largest drop since 2007.

The state responded at scale: a group of state-owned buyers called the national team spent RMB 1.6 trillion on shares, and regulators restricted short selling and suspended new public share offerings. The page on the 2015 China stock market crash follows the ripple into Asian markets, which matters to readers in Singapore, Hong Kong, and ASEAN.

Which patterns repeat across every stock market crash on this list?

Borrowed money, stretched prices, and a trigger appear again and again. In 1929 buyers put down 10% and borrowed the rest. In 2015 state buyers stepped in once prices broke. In 1987 the Fed promised liquidity. The page on what every stock market crash has in common names five repeated patterns and tests each against these cases.

Use the ranking as a map, not a forecast. As of October 2026 timing stays a probability, and each fall on this list shows a different mix of depth, speed, and recovery. The EQOS Asia simulator lets you test how a portfolio behaves in a soft landing, a correction, and a crash.

Frequently asked questions

About the author

Stéphane Jambu

President, EQOS Forecast Asia

Stéphane Jambu leads EQOS Forecast Asia and works as a consultant in e-commerce, search visibility, and AI. LinkedIn profile