Stats › Bear markets and drawdowns › Crash base rates
A market enters a crash roughly one year in ten, and a crash means a quarter of real value
| Country | Largest real decline | Years | Country | Largest real decline | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 0.97 | 1943 to 1947 | Norway | 0.55 | 1919 to 1921 |
| Portugal | 0.97 | 1974 to 1978 | United States | 0.55 | 1929 to 1931 |
| Germany | 0.91 | 1914 to 1920 | Canada | 0.54 | 1929 to 1932 |
| Italy | 0.89 | 1944 to 1945 | Spain | 0.53 | 1929 to 1931 |
| Austria | 0.84 | 1947 to 1950 | Finland | 0.47 | - |
| Belgium | 0.76 | 1914 to 1918 | Netherlands | 0.47 | 1918 to 1922 |
| France | 0.69 | 1943 to 1945 | Greece | 0.37 | - |
| Switzerland | 0.68 | 1914 to 1920 | Australia | 0.25 | - |
| Denmark, Sweden, UK | 0.60 | 1912 to 1922 | Peru | 0.86 | 1981 to 1982 |
Fractional cumulative real declines from a peak to trough procedure over multiple years, from a sample of 30 countries, 20 of them in the developed group, covering 3,037 annual observations to 2006. The Portuguese, Austrian, Belgian and Swiss figures rest on interpolated index data rather than observed prices, which the source flags. No standard errors or confidence intervals accompany any of these magnitudes.
Across 30 countries and 3,037 annual observations, the unconditional probability of entering a crash of 25 per cent or more in real terms is 0.101 a year. The worst national declines reach 97 per cent.
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