Most shocks in capital markets are, by definition, unexpected. They sometimes derive purely from some almost random-seeming shift in market sentiment, albeit with more deep-set fundamental factors at work. The Great Crash of 1929 and the stock market crash of October 1987 – Black Monday – fall neatly into that category.
Others are more clearly understood in real time, but still a shock: the global financial crisis of 2008 is comprehensible from a distance, albeit famously seen as a “black swan” event. Still others are more purely external – Arab nations imposing an oil curfew after the Yom Kippur war in 1973; or whatever bat, pangolin or Chinese lab assistant was responsible for the coronavirus getting loose.
