Shanghai's crashing stock market has lost $2 trillion — more than the value of all German stocks — in 17 days
China's stock collapse in the last couple of weeks has been as dramatic as its previous surge was. Despite logging its biggest one-day rise since 2009 on Thursday, the previous 17 days saw the index collapse by 32.1%.
Given the overall size of the Chinese stock market, that means tremendous amounts of market value was lost. In fact, according to a note from Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts on Thursday morning, $2 trillion (£1.30 trillion) was wiped off the Shanghai Composite, the country's benchmark stock index.
Here's how that looks:
BAML
There have been steeper crashes in countries around the world throughout history, but the notable thing about the Shanghai Composite's collapse is the speed at which it went through the floor. In 2008, Shanghai stocks fell by 49.2%, but it took 125 trading days to do so from the top.
You can see from the graph above that the crash is far sharper than the bursting of the 2008 stock bubble, even though the index had further to fall back then.
Here's how it looks in historical context:
BAML
The plunge has been stalled, with nearly half of the stocks on the exchange not trading on Wednesday.
The individual collapses of companies could also have been more severe if it wasn't for the 10% maximum movement that Chinese stocks are allowed to make each day — once they fall by a tenth in value, trading is suspended.
To put the slump in context, According to the World Federation of Exchanges the companies listed by Germany's Deutsche Borse ran to $1.823 trillion (£1.18 trillion) in May.