<p>Why did American share prices fall sharply on February 5, 2018? What are the major contributing factors to this?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-06T02:56:50.297Z
Many arguments are being made.  My bet is on the fear of high interest rates.
Hot Licks
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-06T12:00:17.517Z
This may be best asked on the Quantitative Finance stack exchange. I used to write market commentary, and my opinion is that it is extremely difficult to pin down causality in a case like this. There were no fundamental economic news that could plausibly associated with the drop in prices on the day, so it is most likely the result of some investors being forced to sell. In particular, implied volatility spiked, causing margin calls for short volatility strategies.
Brian Romanchuk
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2018-02-06T12:12:55.980Z
@BrianRomanchuk I didn't know that there was a Stack Exchange site for Quantitative Finance, thanks.
Curious
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2018-02-09T15:53:38.993Z
Finance questions are on-topic on this site. A question about a specific event like this is hard, if not impossible, to really answer. But this question is on-topic---and it could potentially live on either this site or quant.SE. See https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1341/might-basic-finance-questions-be-on-topic and https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1844/how-should-we-deal-with-questions-from-topics-that-overlap-with-other-stack-exch
jmbejara
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2018-02-09T15:55:37.013Z
Here's some commentary about the recent fluctuations from an economist's perspective: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/02/stock-gyrations.html
jmbejara
<stock-market><united-states>
U.S. stock market 2/5/18
Curious
# U.S. stock market 2/5/18

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-02-06)

Why did American share prices fall sharply on February 5, 2018? What are the major contributing factors to this?

**Tags:** stock-market, united-states

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Many arguments are being made.  My bet is on the fear of high interest rates.  
> **username_2**: This may be best asked on the Quantitative Finance stack exchange. I used to write market commentary, and my opinion is that it is extremely difficult to pin down causality in a case like this. There were no fundamental economic news that could plausibly associated with the drop in prices on the day, so it is most likely the result of some investors being forced to sell. In particular, implied volatility spiked, causing margin calls for short volatility strategies.  
> **username_0**: @username_2 I didn't know that there was a Stack Exchange site for Quantitative Finance, thanks.  
> **username_3**: Finance questions are on-topic on this site. A question about a specific event like this is hard, if not impossible, to really answer. But this question is on-topic---and it could potentially live on either this site or quant.SE. See https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1341/might-basic-finance-questions-be-on-topic and https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1844/how-should-we-deal-with-questions-from-topics-that-overlap-with-other-stack-exch  
> **username_3**: Here's some commentary about the recent fluctuations from an economist's perspective: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/02/stock-gyrations.html  

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