On this page is a NASDAQ Drawdown History Calculator. It tracks every peak-to-trough decline the NASDAQ Composite has been through since February 1971, how deep each one went, and how long it took to reclaim the prior high.
The NASDAQ Drawdown History Calculator
Using the NASDAQ Drawdown Calculator
The default view shows total-return drawdowns (dividends reinvested or nominal). Everything responds in real time as you toggle settings.
- Reinvest Dividends – on by default. Switch off to instead see price-only drawdowns – the version most financial-press crash retrospectives quote.
- Adjust for Inflation – flips the calculation into real (CPI-adjusted) terms.
- Underwater chart – zero at every new all-time high, negative everywhere else. The brush at the bottom defaults to the last 30 years; drag it back to 1971 (the start of the dataset) or in on a single episode.
- Highlights cards – eight summary stats covering both today and the full history: today's drawdown depth and time underwater, the deepest ever and its date, the longest decline period, the longest recovery, the longest total time below the prior peak, the count of bear markets (≥20%), the count of corrections (10–20%), and the most recent 10%+ drawdown.
Top 10 worst NASDAQ drawdowns
Below is the static reference table of the ten worst NASDAQ drawdowns on record – total-return based, peak month through trough month through new-high recovery month. Click to expand the chart.
Top 10 NASDAQ Composite drawdowns table
| Peak | Trough | Recovery | Depth | Decline | Recovery | Underwater |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2000 | Oct 2002 | Jun 2014 | -73.90% | 31 mo | 140 mo | 171 mo |
| Jan 1973 | Sep 1974 | May 1978 | -54.59% | 20 mo | 44 mo | 64 mo |
| Nov 2021 | Oct 2022 | Feb 2024 | -31.22% | 11 mo | 16 mo | 27 mo |
| Aug 1987 | Dec 1987 | Jun 1989 | -29.61% | 4 mo | 18 mo | 22 mo |
| Oct 1989 | Oct 1990 | Mar 1991 | -27.19% | 12 mo | 5 mo | 17 mo |
| Jun 1983 | Jul 1984 | Dec 1985 | -26.01% | 13 mo | 17 mo | 30 mo |
| Jun 1981 | Aug 1982 | Nov 1982 | -21.30% | 14 mo | 3 mo | 17 mo |
| Feb 2020 | Mar 2020 | Jun 2020 | -17.45% | 1 mo | 3 mo | 4 mo |
| Jul 1998 | Oct 1998 | Dec 1998 | -16.69% | 3 mo | 2 mo | 5 mo |
| Feb 1980 | Apr 1980 | Jul 1980 | -15.28% | 2 mo | 3 mo | 5 mo |
The fourteen-year recovery...
The defining episode in the NASDAQ's drawdown history is the dot-com bust. It's the deepest, longest to bottom, and (by a wide margin) the longest stretch underwater.
- 2000–2014 (Dot-com bust) – peak March 2000, trough October 2002, total-return new high not reached until June 2014. A 74% total-return drawdown, 31 months from peak to trough, then nearly 12 years to climb back. On a price-only basis the recovery took until February 2015 – nearly fifteen years from the prior peak. By a wide margin the longest underwater stretch in any major US index post-Great-Depression. The 2007–2009 financial crisis happened entirely inside this drawdown: the NASDAQ on a total return basis had partially recovered from the 2002 trough by October 2007, then fell another 48% to its March 2009 local low, then resumed grinding back to the 2014 new high.
- 1973–1978 (Stagflation bear) – a 55% total-return drawdown from January 1973 to September 1974, with recovery to a new TR high in May 1978. Notably deeper than the same episode on the S&P 500 (~39%) and the Dow (~37%).
- 2021–2024 (Tech selloff) – peak November 2021, trough October 2022, recovery to a new TR high in February 2024. A 31% total-return drawdown.
- Other ≥20% bear markets in the dataset – 1981–82, 1983–85, 1987 (Black Monday), 1989–90. Seven ≥20% TR bear markets in 55 years.
Methodology and sources
NASDAQ Composite daily prices come from the Federal Reserve's NASDAQCOM series on FRED, with each monthly value being the average of that month's daily closes. For the dividend back-out detail and additional construction notes, see DQYDJ's NASDAQ Return Calculator.
What is a drawdown?
A drawdown is the distance between an index's current level and the highest level it has ever printed. At a new all-time high, the drawdown is zero. Anywhere below that, it's negative – the percentage gap from the prior peak.
Formally, for any month t:
\text{drawdown}_t = \frac{V_t - \max(V_0, \ldots, V_t)}{\max(V_0, \ldots, V_t)}Output sits between 0 (at a fresh high) and −1 (a 100% loss).
A quick note on monthly averaging: it captures slow 'grinders' like the dot-com bust faithfully – the NASDAQ's 31-month slide from 2000 to 2002 was a textbook monthly-average decline. However, it smooths out fast shocks like 1987's Black Monday or the COVID fall in March 2020, both of which were sharper on a daily-close chart than this tool can show.
