On February 19 this year, the Stockholm Stock Exchange's so-called OMX index was at its highest level ever. The strong stock market upswing in 2019 meant that stock market records were beaten time and time again. But all of last year's rise and more are gone today. When the Stockholm Stock Exchange opened on Thursday morning, the stock market again fell sharply, this time at most by around seven percent.
This means that the average share price of all Stockholm Stock Exchange companies during Thursday morning was at the same level as it did on March 12 exactly five years ago.
2 trillion away
SVT has taken note of statistics from the company Nasdaq, which owns the Stockholm Stock Exchange and which shows that the stock exchange race of recent weeks has caused the stock market to lose more than SEK 2 billion in value. On February 19, the total market capitalization was just over SEK 8 billion. Since then, the stock market has lost just over a quarter of its value.
The major stock market declines in recent weeks can be compared to the share prices during the financial crisis of 2008. On several occasions, the Stockholm Stock Exchange fell by between six and seven percent. The financial crisis meant that the stock market lost about half its value in a short period of time.
Black Monday
The decline over time was even more pronounced in connection with the IT bubble and its crash in the early 2000s. In less than three years, the stock market fell by about seventy percent. It was not until 2007 that the stock exchange recovered. After the sharp financial downturn in 2008, it took five years before it was again at the same level it did before.
The largest stock market fall in history was October 19, 1987. The day is still called Black Monday. In New York, the Dow Jones index fell 22.6 percent. In Stockholm, the stock market fell by about six percent the same day and eight percent the day after. In about two weeks, almost 40 percent of the value of the Stockholm Stock Exchange was erased.