What name is given to the major global equity-market decline that lasted from 1973 to 1974?

The major global equity-market decline that lasted from 1973 to 1974 is called the 1973–1974 stock market crash.

The crash affected markets in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and other major economies. In the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell approximately 45% between January 1973 and December 1974. The decline was part of a broader period of economic turmoil rather than a single trading-day event.

Important pressures included the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, high inflation, recession, and the 1973 oil crisis. The Yom Kippur War was followed by an Arab oil embargo, which contributed to sharply higher energy prices and intensified inflationary pressures in industrial economies.

The episode is sometimes grouped with the 1970s energy crisis, but the terms describe different things: the oil crisis concerned energy supply and prices, while the stock-market crash describes the fall in equity values. The crash helped end the long postwar bull market of the 1950s and 1960s.