Speculation

In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that that asset will become more valuable in a brief amount of time.[1][2][3] The term can also refer to short sales, in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value. Speculation often has a pejorative connotation, as the activity is linked to bubbles, economic downturns, and financial crises.[4]

Many speculators pay little attention to the fundamental value of a security and instead focus purely on price movements.[5] In principle, speculation can involve any tradable good or financial instrument. Speculators are particularly common in the markets for stocks, bonds, commodity futures, currencies, cryptocurrency, fine art, collectibles, real estate, and financial derivatives.

Speculators play one of the four primary roles in financial markets, along with:

* hedgers, who engage in transactions to offset some other pre-existing risk
* arbitrageurs, who seek to profit from situations where fungible instruments trade at different prices in different market-segments
* investors, who seek profit through long-term ownership of an instrument's underlying attributes.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Speculation vs. investment
* 3 Economic benefits
* 3.1 Sustainable consumption level
* 3.2 Market liquidity and efficiency
* 3.3 Bearing risks
* 3.4 Finding environmental and other risks
* 3.5 Shorting
* 4 Economic disadvantages
* 4.1 Winner's curse
* 4.2 Economic bubbles
* 5 Government responses and regulation
* 5.1 Regulations
* 5.2 Proposals
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 Books
* 9 Further reading
* 10 External links

## History

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The development of commodity markets in the 17th-century Netherlands soon created speculative bubbles such as the tulip mania of 1634 to 1637.[6] The bursting of the South Sea Bubble in England in 1720 and the near-simultaneous collapse of John Law's Mississippi Company in France[7] brought speculation into disrepute in early-18th century Europe.[8]

After 1867 the appearance of the stock ticker machine in New York removed the need for traders to physically visit the stock-exchange floor, and stock speculation underwent a dramatic expansion through the end of the 1920s. The number of shareholders increased,[where?] perhaps, from 4.4 million in 1900 to 26 million in 1932.[9]

## Speculation vs. investment

The view of what distinguishes investment from speculation and speculation from excessive speculation varies widely among pundits, legislators and academics. Some sources note that speculation is simply a higher-risk form of investment. Others define speculation more narrowly as positions not characterized as hedging.[10] The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines a speculator as "a trader who does not hedge, but who trades with the objective of achieving profits through the successful anticipation of price movements".[11] The agency emphasizes that speculators serve important market functions, but defines excessive speculation as harmful to the proper functioning of futures markets.[12]

According to Benjamin Graham in The Intelligent Investor, the prototypical defensive investor is "one interested chiefly in safety plus freedom from bother". He adds that "some speculation is necessary and unavoidable, for, in many common-stock situations, there are substantial possibilities of both profit and loss, and the risks therein must be assumed by someone." Thus, many long-term investors, even those who buy and hold for decades, may be classified as speculators, excepting only the rare few who are primarily motivated by income or safety of principal and not eventually selling at a profit.[13]

## Economic benefits

### Sustainable consumption level

Speculation usually involves more risks than investment.

Nicholas Kaldor[14] has long argued for the price-stabilizing role of speculators, who tend to even out "price-fluctuations due to changes in the conditions of demand or supply", by possessing "better than average foresight". This view was later echoed by the speculator Victor Niederhoffer, in "The Speculator as Hero",[15] who describes the benefits of speculation:

> Let's consider some of the principles that explain the causes of shortages and surpluses and the role of speculators. When a harvest is too small to satisfy consumption at its normal rate, speculators come in, hoping to profit from the scarcity by buying. Their purchases raise the price, thereby checking consumption so that the smaller supply will last longer. Producers encouraged by the high price further lessen the shortage by growing or importing to reduce the shortage. On the other side, when the price is higher than the speculators think the facts warrant, they sell. This reduces prices, encouraging consumption and exports and helping to reduce the surplus.

Another service provided by speculators to a market is that by risking their own capital in the hope of profit, they add liquidity to the market and make it easier or even possible for others to offset risk, including those who may be classified as hedgers and arbitrageurs.

### Market liquidity and efficiency

If any market, such as pork bellies, had no speculators, only producers (hog farmers) and consumers (butchers, etc.) would participate. With fewer players in the market, there would be a larger spread between the current bid and the asking price of pork bellies. Any new entrant in the market who wanted to trade pork bellies would be forced to accept this illiquid market and might trade at market prices with large bid–ask spreads or even face difficulty finding a co-party to buy or sell to.

By contrast, a commodity speculator may profit from the difference in the spread and, in competition with other speculators, reduce the spread. Some schools of thought argue that speculators increase the liquidity in a market, and therefore promote an efficient market.[16] This efficiency is difficult to achieve without speculators. Speculators take information and speculate on how it affects prices, producers and consumers, who may want to hedge their risks, needing counterparties if they could find each other without markets it certainly would happen as it would be cheaper. A very beneficial by-product of speculation for the economy is price discovery.

On the other hand, as more speculators participate in a market, underlying real demand and supply can diminish compared to trading volume, and prices may become distorted.[16]

### Bearing risks

Speculators perform a risk-bearing role that can be beneficial to society. For example, a farmer might consider planting corn on unused farmland. However, he might not want to do so because he is concerned that the price might fall too far by harvest time. By selling his crop in advance at a fixed price to a speculator, he can now hedge the price risk and plant the corn. Thus, speculators can increase production through their willingness to take on risk (not at the loss of profit).

### Finding environmental and other risks

Speculative hedge funds that do fundamental analysis "are far more likely than other investors to try to identify a firm's off-balance-sheet exposures" including "environmental or social liabilities present in a market or company but not explicitly accounted for in traditional numeric valuation or mainstream investor analysis". Hence, they make the prices better reflect the true quality of operation of the firms.[17]

### Shorting

Shorting may act as a "canary in a coal mine" to stop unsustainable practices earlier and thus reduce damages and form market bubbles.[17]

## Economic disadvantages

### Winner's curse

Auctions are a method of squeezing out speculators from a transaction, but they may have their own perverse effects by the winner's curse. The winner's curse is, however, not very significant to markets with high liquidity for both buyers and sellers, as the auction for selling the product and the auction for buying the product occur simultaneously, and the two prices are separated only by a relatively small spread. That mechanism prevents the winner's curse phenomenon from causing mispricing to any degree greater than the spread.

### Economic bubbles

Speculation is often associated with economic bubbles.[18] A bubble occurs when the price for an asset exceeds its intrinsic value by a significant margin,[19] although not all bubbles occur due to speculation.[20] Speculative bubbles are characterized by rapid market expansion driven by word-of-mouth feedback loops, as initial rises in asset price attract new buyers and generate further inflation.[21] The growth of the bubble is followed by a precipitous collapse fueled by the same phenomenon.[19][22] Speculative bubbles are essentially social epidemics whose contagion is mediated by the structure of the market.[22] Some economists link asset price movements within a bubble to fundamental economic factors such as cash flows and discount rates.[23]

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the situation is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. (1936:159)"[24] Keynes himself enjoyed speculation to the fullest, running an early precursor of a hedge fund. As the Bursar of King's College, Cambridge, he managed two investment funds, one of which, called Chest Fund, invested not only in the then "emerging" market US stocks, but to a smaller extent periodically included commodity futures and foreign currencies (see Chua and Woodward, 1983). His fund was profitable almost every year, averaging 13% per year, even during the Great Depression, thanks to very modern investment strategies, which included inter-market diversification (it invested in stocks, commodities and currencies) as well as shorting (selling borrowed stocks or futures to profit from falling prices), which Keynes advocated among the principles of successful investment in his 1933 report: "a balanced investment position... and if possible, opposed risks".[25]

It is controversial whether the presence of speculators increases or decreases short-term volatility in a market. Their provision of capital and information may help stabilize prices closer to their true values. On the other hand, crowd behavior and positive feedback loops in market participants may also increase volatility.{{citation needed|date=November 2025}

## Government responses and regulation

The economic disadvantages of speculation have resulted in a number of attempts over the years to introduce regulations and restrictions to try to limit or reduce the impact of speculators. States often enact such financial regulations in response to a crisis and they remain in place for some time: for example the British government passed the Bubble Act 1720 at the height of the South Sea Bubble to try to stop speculation in such schemes. The act remained in place for over a hundred years until it was repealed in 1825. The Glass–Steagall Act, passed in 1933 during the Great Depression in the United States, provides another example; most of the Glass-Steagall provisions were repealed during the 1980s and 1990s. The Onion Futures Act bans the trading of futures contracts on onions in the United States, after speculators successfully cornered the market in the mid-1950s; it remains in effect as of 2021[update].

The Soviet Union regarded any form of private trade with the intent of gaining profit as speculation (Russian: спекуляция) and a criminal offense and punished speculators accordingly with fines, imprisonment, confiscation and/or corrective labor. Speculation was specifically defined in article 154 of the Penal Code of the USSR.[26]

### Regulations

In the United States, following passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed regulations aimed at limiting speculation in futures markets by instituting position limits. The CFTC offers three basic elements for their regulatory framework: "the size (or levels) of the limits themselves; the exemptions from the limits (for example, hedged positions) and; the policy on aggregating accounts for purposes of applying the limits".[27] The proposed position limits would apply to 28 physical commodities traded in various exchanges across the US.[28]

Another part of the Dodd-Frank Act established the Volcker Rule, which deals with speculative investments of banks that do not benefit their customers. Passed on 21 January 2010, it states that those investments played a key role in the 2008 financial crisis.[29]

### Proposals

See also: Finance:Speculative attack, Currency crisis, Black Wednesday, Fictitious capital, Financial transaction tax, Land value tax, Currency transaction tax, Tobin tax, and Spahn tax

Proposals made in the past to try to limit speculation – but never enacted – included:

* The Tobin tax was a proposed tax intended to reduce short-term currency speculation, ostensibly to stabilize foreign exchange.
* In May 2008, German leaders planned to propose a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators, blaming the 2008 oil price rises on manipulation by hedge funds.[30]
* On 3 December 2009, Representative Peter DeFazio, who blamed "reckless speculation" for the 2008 financial crisis, proposed the introduction of a financial transaction tax, which would have specifically targeted speculators by taxing financial-market securities transactions.

## See also

This "see also" section may contain an excessive number of suggestions. Please ensure that only the most relevant links are given, that they are not red links, and that any links are not already in this article. (December 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

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* Adventurer
* Behavioral finance
* Black Wednesday
* Bull (stock market speculator)
* Carbon credits
* Currency crisis
* Currency transaction tax
* Day trading
* DeFazio financial transaction tax
* Domain name speculation
* Equity
* European crime
* Fictitious capital
* Financial market
* Financial regulatory reform
* Flipping
* Food speculation
* George Soros
* Jesse Lauriston Livermore
* Seasonal traders
* Short selling
* Slippage
* Spahn tax
* Speculative attack
* Stock market bubble
* Stock trader
* Tobin tax
* Tulip mania
* Volcker Rule

## References

1. ↑ Compare: Thomas Temple Hoyne (1922). Speculation: Its Sound Principles and Rules for Its Practice. Chicago: Economic Feature Service. p. 35. https://books.google.com/books?id=D9M_PJn7JiEC. Retrieved 12 August 2025. "Much of the confusion that has muddled attempts to define speculation has grown out of the use of the term not only as the name for all transactions of a certain class, but also as the name for the force that brings them about and underlies all economic activity, and for the reasoning that directs that force. The definition which I have developed is a definition of those transactions which are the resultants of the speculative force acting alone, and directed by reasoning."
2. ↑ Baumol, William J. (1957). "Speculation, Profitability, and Stability". The Review of Economics and Statistics 39 (3): 263–271. doi:10.2307/1926042. ISSN 0034-6535. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1926042.
3. ↑ Kaldor, Nicholas (1939). "Speculation and Economic Stability". The Review of Economic Studies 7 (1): 1. doi:10.2307/2967593. https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-lookup/doi/10.2307/2967593.
4. ↑ Quinn, William; Turner, John D.; Walker, Clive B. (2026). "Speculation in the United Kingdom, 1785‒2019" (in en). The Economic History Review. doi:10.1111/ehr.70087. ISSN 1468-0289. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ehr.70087.
5. ↑ Taylor, Mark P.; Allen, Helen (1992-06-01). "The use of technical analysis in the foreign exchange market" (in en). Journal of International Money and Finance 11 (3): 304–314. doi:10.1016/0261-5606(92)90048-3. ISSN 0261-5606. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0261-5606(92)90048-3.
6. ↑ Petram, Lodewijk (15 July 2020). "The First Boom". The World's First Stock Exchange. Columbia Business School Publishing. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 116. ISBN 9780231537322. https://books.google.com/books?id=V8fbAgAAQBAJ. Retrieved 24 November 2025. "When gambling was no longer allowed, speculation became more popular. Perhaps the best known example is the speculation on the value of tulip bulbs in the 1630s. [...] The number of people involved in trading bulbs increased rapidly, and tulip bulbs changed hands frequently, particularly in Haarlem but also in Enkhuizen, Alkmaar, and Amsterdam. Most of the trading took place in winter, so it consisted solely of forward deals. In winter, after all, tulip bulbs are in the ground."
7. ↑ Garber, Peter M. (1994). "Famous First Bubbles". Speculative Bubbles, Speculative Attacks, and Policy Switching. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 31-54. ISBN 9780262061698. https://books.google.com/books?id=wRpkKTQ9eLgC. Retrieved 24 November 2025.
8. ↑ Shultz, Birl Earl (1948). The Securities Market and how it Works. Harper. p. 30. https://books.google.com/books?id=UGAPAQAAMAAJ. Retrieved 24 November 2025. "Catching hold of the public imagination, speculation developed into such a fever that the senseless excesses of the Tulip Craze in Holland (1636 and 1637), the South Sea Bubble in England (1720), and the Mississippi Bubble in France (1720) followed as a natural consequence. After these manias, speculation very properly fell, for a time, into disrepute."
9. ↑ Stäheli 2013, p. 4.
10. ↑ Szado, Edward (2011). "Defining Speculation: The First Step toward a Rational Dialogue". The Journal of Alternative Investments (CAIA Association) 14: 75–82. doi:10.3905/jai.2011.14.1.075.
11. ↑ "CFTC Glossary: A guide to the language of the futures industry". cftc.gov. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. http://www.cftc.gov/consumerprotection/educationcenter/cftcglossary/glossary_s.
12. ↑ "Staff Report on Commodity Swap Dealers & Index Traders with Commission Recommendations". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 2008. http://www.cftc.gov/ucm/groups/public/@newsroom/documents/file/cftcstaffreportonswapdealers09.pdf.
13. ↑ Graham, Benjamin (1973). The Intelligent Investor. HarperCollins Books. ISBN 0-06-055566-1.
14. ↑ Nicholas Kaldor, 1960. Essays on Economic Stability and Growth. Illinois: The Free Press of Glencoe.
15. ↑ Victor Niederhoffer, The Wall Street Journal, 10 February 1989 Daily Speculations
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Heckinger, Richard (August 2013). "Derivatives Overview". Understanding Derivatives: Markets and Infrastructure (Revised ed.). Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. http://www.chicagofed.org/-/media/publications/understanding-derivatives/understanding-derivatives-chapter-1-derivatives-overview-pdf.pdf.
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Unlikely heroes - Can hedge funds save the world? One pundit thinks so, The Economist, 16 February 2010
18. ↑ Teeter, Preston; Sandberg, Jorgen (2017). "Cracking the enigma of asset bubbles with narratives". Strategic Organization 15 (1): 91–99. doi:10.1177/1476127016629880.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Hollander, Barbara Gottfried (2011). Booms, Bubbles, & Busts (The Global Marketplace). Heinemann Library. pp. 40–41. ISBN 978-1432954772. https://books.google.com/books?id=1ZASrmGg6uIC&q=speculative+speculation+bubbles&pg=PA40.
20. ↑ Lei, Noussair & Plott 2001, p. 831: "In a setting in which speculation is not possible, bubbles and crashes are observed. The results suggest that the departures from fundamental values are not caused by the lack of common knowledge of rationality leading to speculation, but rather by behavior that itself exhibits elements of irrationality."
21. ↑ Rosser, J. Barkley (2000). From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities: Mathematics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Finance. Springer. p. 107. ISBN 9780792377702. https://books.google.com/books?id=mIluNwn5K8IC&q=From+Catastrophe+to+Chaos:+a+General+Theory+of+Economic+Discontinuities.
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Shiller, Robert J. (23 July 2012). "Bubbles without Markets". http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bubbles-without-markets.
23. ↑ Siegel, Journal (2003). "What Is an Asset Price Bubble? An Operation Definition". European Financial Management 9 (1): 11–24. doi:10.1111/1468-036x.00206. http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/EUFM_Siegel.pdf.
24. ↑ Dr. Stephen Spratt of Intelligence Capital (September 2006). "A Sterling Solution". Stamp Out Poverty report. Stamp Out Poverty Campaign. p. 15. http://www.stampoutpoverty.org/?lid=9889.
25. ↑ Chua, J. H.; Woodward, R. S. (1983). "The Investment Wizardry of J. M. Keynes". Financial Analysts Journal 39 (3): 35–37. doi:10.2469/faj.v39.n3.35.
26. ↑ "Статья 154. Спекуляция ЗАКОН РСФСР от 27-10-60 ОБ УТВЕРЖДЕНИИ УГОЛОВНОГО КОДЕКСА РСФСР (вместе с УГОЛОВНЫМ КОДЕКСОМ РСФСР)". https://zakonbase.ru/content/part/417416.
27. ↑ "Speculative Limits". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. http://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/MarketSurveillance/SpeculativeLimits/index.htm#P6_864.
28. ↑ "CFTC Approves Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding Regulations on Aggregation for Position Limits for Futures and Swaps". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6260-12.
29. ↑ David Cho and Binyamin Appelbaum (22 January 2010). "Obama's 'Volcker Rule' shifts power away from Geithner". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012104935.html.
30. ↑ Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose (26 May 2008). "Germany in call for ban on oil speculation". The Daily Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/26/cnoil126.xml.

## Books

* Covel, Michael. The Complete Turtle Trader. HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 9780061241703
* Douglas, Mark. The Disciplined Trader. New York Institute of Finance, 1990. ISBN 0-13-215757-8
* Gunther, Max The Zurich Axioms Souvenir Press (1st print 1985) ISBN 0-285-63095-4.
* Fox, Justin. The Myth of the Rational Market. Harper Collins, 2009. ISBN 9780060598990
* Harper, H. H. The psychology of speculation: The human element in stock market transactions, privately printed 1926
* \
- After the stock market crash of November, 1929 The Torch Press, 1930
* Lefèvre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2005 (1st print 1923) ISBN 0471678767
* Neill, Humphrey B. The Art of Contrary Thinking Caxton Press 1954.
* Niederhoffer, Victor Practical Speculation John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2005 ISBN 0-471-67774-4
* Sobel, Robert The Money Manias: The Eras of Great Speculation in America, 1770-1970 Beard Books 1973 ISBN 1-58798-028-2
* Patterson, Scott The Quants, How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed it Crown Business, 2010 ISBN 9780307453372
* Schwartz, Martin "Buzzy". Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Trader HarperCollins, 2007 ISBN 9780061844638
* Schwager, Jack D. Trading with the Market Wizards: The Complete Market Wizards Series John Wiley & Sons 2013 ISBN 9781118582978
* Tharp, Van K. Definitive Guide to Position Sizing International Institute of Trading Mastery, 2008. ISBN 0935219099

## Further reading

* Lei, Vivian; Noussair, Charles N.; Plott, Charles R. (2001). "Nonspeculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality Vs. Actual Irrationality". Econometrica 69 (4): 831–859. doi:10.1111/1468-0262.00222. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/43956/1/non speculative bubbles in experimental.pdf.
* Stäheli, Urs (2013). Spectacular Speculation: Thrills, the Economy, and Popular Discourse. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-804-77131-3.
* Stuart, Banner (2017). Speculation: A History of the Fine Line between Gambling and Investing. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190623043.
* Blaakman, Michael A. (2023) (in en). Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-1-5128-2447-6.

## External links

* Hidden Collective Factors in Speculative Trading
* Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises
* Understanding Derivatives: Markets and Infrastructure Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Financial Markets Group

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* Cobalt silver rush (1903–c. 1930)
* Panic of 1907 (1907–1908)
* Porcupine Gold Rush (1909–c. 1960)
* Panic of 1910–11 (1910–1912)
* Financial crisis of 1914 (1913–14)

World War home fronts/
Interwar period
(1914–1945)|

* World War I economy and home fronts
* Australia
* Canada
* United Kingdom
* United States
* Post–World War I recession (1918–1919)
* Recession of 1920–1921
* 1920s Florida land boom (c. 1920–1925)
* Roaring Twenties
* 1923–1924 recession
* 1926–1927 recession
* Great Depression
* 1929–1939; Wall Street crash of 1929
* Panic of 1930
* Great Contraction, 1929–1933
* Recession of 1937–1938
* Australia
* Canada
* India
* South Africa
* United Kingdom
* United States
* 1930s Kakamega Gold Rush
* Third Nova Scotia Gold Rush (1932–1942)
* World War II home front
* Australia
* Canada
* United Kingdom
* United States

Post–WWII expansion/
1970s stagflation
(1945–1982)|

* Great Compression
* 1945 recession
* Recession of 1949 (1948–1949)
* Hong Kong and Singapore Asian Tiger expansions (1950–1990)
* 1951 Canada recession
* Recession of 1953 (1953–1954)
* Recession of 1958 (1957–1958)
* Recession of 1960–1961
* Kennedy Slide of 1962
* Poseidon bubble (1969–1970)
* Recession of 1969–1970
* 1970s commodities boom
* 1973–1975 recession
* 1973–1974 stock market crash
* Secondary banking crisis of 1973–1975
* 1970s energy crisis
* 1973–1980; 1973 oil crisis
* 1979 oil crisis
* Steel crisis (1973–1982)
* 1976 sterling crisis
* Silver Thursday (1980)
* Early 1980s recession
* 1980–1982; United States

Computer Age/
Second Gilded Age
(1982–present)|

* Great Moderation (1982–2007)
* 1980s oil glut
* Black Saturday (1983)
* New Zealand property bubble (c. 1985–)
* Savings and loan crisis (1986–1995)
* Black Monday (1987)
* Friday the 13th mini-crash (1989)
* Early 1990s recession
* 1990–1991; Australia
* United States
* 1990 oil price shock
* Rhode Island banking crisis (1990–1992)
* 1991 Indian economic crisis
* 1990s United States boom (1991–2001)
* 1990s India economic boom
* Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe (1991–present)
* Black Wednesday (1992)
* 1994 bond market crisis
* 1994 Papua New Guinea financial crisis
* Dot-com bubble
* 1995–2004; Stock market downturn of 2002
* 1997 Asian financial crisis
* October 27, 1997, mini-crash
* Early 2000s recession
* 2001; 9/11 stock market crash
* 2000s commodities boom (2000–2014)
* United States housing bubble (2002–2006)
* Canadian property bubble (2002–)
* 2003 Myanmar banking crisis
* 2000s energy crisis (2003–2008)
* North Dakota oil boom (2006–2015)
* Uranium bubble of 2007
* Great Recession
* 2007–2009; Australia and New Zealand
* Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka
* British West Indies
* Canada
* South Africa
* United Kingdom
* United States
* 2008 financial crisis
* September
* October
* November
* December
* 2009
* Subprime mortgage crisis
* 2000s U.S. housing market correction
* U.S. bear market of 2007–2009
* 2007–2010 U.S. bank failures
* Corporate debt bubble (2008–)
* Blue Monday Crash 2009
* 2010 flash crash
* Malaysia Tiger Cub expansion (2010s)
* Australian property bubble (2010–)
* August 2011 stock markets fall
* Black Monday
* 2011 Bangladesh share market scam
* Cryptocurrency bubble (2011–)
* Puerto Rican government-debt crisis (2014–2022)
* 2015–2016 stock market selloff
* Brexit stock market crash (2016)
* 2017 Sri Lankan fuel crisis
* Ghana banking crisis (2017–2018)
* Sri Lankan economic crisis (2019–2024)
* COVID-19 recession
* 2020–2022; 2020 stock market crash
* financial market impact
* sectoral impacts
* shortages
* Canada
* India
* Malaysia
* New Zealand
* United Kingdom
* United States
* 2020s commodities boom
* Global energy crisis
* 2021–2023; 2021 United Kingdom natural gas supplier crisis
* regional effects
* 2021–2023 global supply chain crisis
* 2021–2023 inflation surge
* Pakistani economic crisis (2021–2024)
* 2022 stock market decline
* 2022–2023 global food crises
* 2023 United Kingdom recession
* 2023 United States banking crisis
* 2025 stock market crash

Countries and sectors|

* Australia
* rail transport
* slavery
* whaling/Western Australia
* Canada
* agriculture
* currencies
* early banking system
* list of recessions
* petroleum industry
* rail transport
* slavery
* technological and industrial
* whaling/Pacific Northwest
* Ghana
* India
* agriculture
* Company rule
* maritime
* British Raj
* Deindustrialisation
* salt tax
* slavery
* Malaysia
* New Zealand
* whaling
* Nigeria
* slavery
* Pakistan
* maritime
* rail transport
* South Africa
* slavery
* whaling
* Uganda
* United Kingdom
* Agricultural Revolution
* Atlantic slave trade
* banking
* British Empire
* English fiscal system
* Interwar unemployment and poverty
* list of recessions
* maritime/England/Scotland
* Middle Ages England/agriculture
* national debt
* Scotland/agriculture/Middle Ages
* rail transport/pre–1830/1830–1922/1923–1947/1948–1994/1995–present
* slavery
* trade unions
* Victorian era
* Wales
* whaling/Scotland
* United States
* agriculture
* banking/colonial-era credit/cooperatives/investment banking/wildcat banking
* business
* central banking
* coal mining
* indentured servitude
* iron and steel industry
* labor
* list of economic expansions
* list of recessions
* lumber industry
* maritime/colonial-era/1776–1799/1800–1899/1900–1999/2000–present
* monetary policy
* poverty
* petroleum industry/oil shale
* public debt
* rail transportation
* slavery/colonial-era slavery/forced labor/slave trade/slave markets
* tariffs
* taxation
* technological and industrial
* United States dollar
* whaling
* Zimbabwe

Business cycle topics|

* Aggregate demand/Supply
* Effective demand
* General glut
* Model
* Overproduction
* Paradox of thrift
* Price-and-wage stickiness
* Underconsumption
* Inflation and unemployment
* Chronic
* Classical dichotomy
* Debasement
* Debt monetization
* Demand-pull/cost-push/built-in inflation
* Deflation
* Disinflation
* Full employment
* Hyperinflation
* Money supply/demand
* NAIRU
* Natural rate of unemployment
* Neutrality of money
* Phillips curve
* Price level
* Real and nominal value
* Sahm rule
* Velocity of money
* Expansion
* Miracle
* Recovery
* Stagnation
* Interest rate
* Nominal interest rate
* Real interest rate
* Yield curve/Inverted
* Recession
* Balance sheet
* Depression
* Global
* Rolling
* Shapes
* Stagflation
* Shock
* Demand
* Supply

Credit cycle topics|

* Financial bubble
* Commodity booms/diamond rush/gold rush/oil boom
* Real-estate bubble/housing bubble/boomtown/ghost town
* Speculation
* Stock market bubble
* Financial crisis
* Bank run/bank failure
* Commodity price shocks
* Credit crunch
* Currency crisis
* Debt crisis
* Energy crisis
* Liquidity crisis/accounting/capital/funding/market
* Minsky moment/leverage cycle
* Stock market crash/Flash crash
* Social contagion
* Financial contagion
* Irrational exuberance
* Market trend
* Proposed bubbles
* AI bubble/AI boom/Fourth Industrial Revolution/Imagination Age
* Carbon bubble/Age of Oil/Peak oil
* Everything bubble
* Green bubble
* Social media stock bubble
* Unicorn bubble
* U.S. higher education bubble

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