Markets · market history

Market history

11 episodes across four centuries. Each page sets out what led up to it, what happened in order, what changed afterwards and what it helps to understand. Dates and established facts only; where the record is disputed, the page says so.

The line

Four centuries, eleven stops.

Step along the line, or press Play. Each stop names an episode and links to its page.

1630s, Dutch Republic. Tulip mania. A winter trade in promises to buy tulip bulbs rises fast and stops in a week.

Read the page: Tulip mania

Stop 1 of 11

The upper line is drawn to scale; the lower line is its last forty years, enlarged. Only dates are shown. The eleven episodes are a chosen list, so the crowding at the recent end says more about what is remembered and recorded than about how often markets fall.

The episodes

In order of date.

Features

A subject, not an episode.

Longer pieces that follow one thing across the same centuries. They keep the same rule: established dates and names only, and where the record is thin the page says so.

By the calendar

The same history, a day at a time.

Beside the eleven episodes there is a list of dated events, shown by today’s date. Exact, certain dates only.

How these pages are written

A number appears only where it is famous and certain, such as the size of a one-day fall in a published index or a rate announced by a central bank. Where historians disagree, or the record is thin, the page says so and gives no figure.

The curve on each page is an illustrative shape, not market data: a hand-made line on a scale of 0 to 100 with no axis values, there to show the order of a rise and a fall. Each page names the documents its account rests on, by title, issuer and date, and has a short exercise in what was knowable at the time.

These pages describe what happened. They do not say that anything will happen again, and nothing in them is a reason to trade or not to trade. Educational information, not investment advice or a recommendation to trade.

Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for all investors. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you. Before deciding to trade foreign exchange you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. The possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your initial investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose.

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