More interesting are the downward movements during such a significant run-up. The heavy hitter is in '98. In August of that year, Russia defaulted. Best pseudo-name for this I could find is the "Russian Flu".
Wikipedia tells me that the cause was a coupling of the Asian crisis in '97 and drops in commodity prices which Russia relies on. Average crude prices went from almost $20 per barrel (bbl) in '96 to $12 bbl in '98, according to inflationdata.com.
This had implications to a U.S. hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). According to Hafer and Hein, LTCM had bet on government and corporate bond spreads to narrow. Russian default shook investor faith that governments would be good on their debt. Spreads between government and corporate bonds widened and LTCM took a hit.
LTCM had $80B in securities and $1T in derivatives. In response, the U.S. government dropped interest rates by 75 basis points and bailed out LTCM with a cool $3.6B on Sept. 23rd. The chart below is for 98-99. Volume spikes, but the market doesn't move very much on news of the bailout. Apparently, trading is popular near-bottom.
Magnifying down to periods of a few years:
[The 88-92 period looks like it shows some periodicity from the eye-test. Might be a nice set to learn how to test for periodicity, but that's a whole different beast.]
One last plot, showing the rise of the machines. Volume in billions.
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