26 November 2021: Omicron spoils Black Friday
News of a heavily mutated new Covid variant, soon named Omicron, triggered a sharp selloff on a shortened post-Thanksgiving trading day. The Dow fell about 900 points, and oil prices plunged around 13 percent as traders feared new lockdowns. Within weeks, markets had recovered as the variant proved milder than feared. The episode showed how quickly markets price in a worst case.
The lesson: Fear moves faster than facts; the first reaction to news is rarely the final one.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Crude oil (barrel) at the start of 2020 → $1,066 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the latest year on the wheel. That is 1.1 times the money, but $1,027 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Crude oil (barrel) teaches: You cannot easily own oil itself, only futures contracts; the negative print of April 2020 showed that storage and contract mechanics can dominate supply and demand.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $50.00 | $1,300 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $60.00 | $1,083 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $61.00 | $1,066 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Crude oil (barrel)? Every starting year and the full story →
More Crude oil (barrel) history
- 17 January 1991: Oil collapses as Desert Storm begins
- 20 March 2003: The Iraq War begins
- 20 April 2020: US oil prices go negative
- 11 July 2008: Oil peaks at $147 a barrel
- 29 August 2005: Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast
- 17 October 1973: Arab oil producers wield the oil weapon
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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