8. July 2026 | Dr. Thomas Hauser
After the boundless euphoria surrounding AI stocks in April and May, the Nasdaq fell by more than 4% on several trading days in June. Some commentators did have a few things to say about these large daily swings. You have to wonder when certain investors - or speculators? - start to grow concerned after just a few down days.
An equity investor has to be able to withstand significant price fluctuations. What contributes most to the “sense of pain” is not so much a single day's move, but how long the market has already been in a downtrend – and how much it has lost in total. Protracted negative periods wear you down – and it's a feeling an entire generation of investors no longer knows, given that the big, drawn-out crises are now 17 and 23 years in the past.
The table shows the five largest single-day losses on the Swiss equity market (UBS 100 Index) over the past quarter-century or so, along with the broader crisis in which each loss occurred.
|
Date
|
Daily loss
|
Crisis
|
From
|
To
|
Duration
|
Total loss
|
|
12.03.20
|
-9.1%
|
Coronavirus crisis
|
20.02.20
|
23.03.20
|
1 Monat
|
-27.1%
|
|
15.01.15
|
-8.6%
|
End of the euro floor
|
14.01.15
|
16.01.15
|
3 Tage
|
-14.7%
|
|
10.10.08
|
-7.3%
|
Financial crisis
|
04.06.07
|
09.03.09
|
1 Jahr 9 Monate
|
-55.0%
|
|
11.09.01
|
-6.8%
|
Dotcom and 9/11 crises
|
24.08.00
|
12.03.03
|
2 Jahre 7 Monate
|
-56.7%
|
|
06.10.08
|
-5.9%
|
Financial crisis
|
04.06.07
|
09.03.09
|
1 Jahr 9 Monate
|
-55.0%
|
What really wore investors down were the two long, major crises in which portfolios temporarily lost more than half of their value. Older investors will remember them all too well. For younger investors, these crises offer a useful illustration of what you need to be able to endure in a bear market. As the stock market legend André Kostolany put it: “Stock market profits are compensation for pain and suffering. First comes pain, then comes money.” For many investors who haven't been in the market all that long, it may well run the other way round: first the money, then the pain.
