Which 1973 event helped trigger the long stock-market decline known as the 1973–1974 crash?

The 1973 oil crisis helped trigger the long stock-market decline known as the 1973–1974 crash.

In October 1973, Arab members of OPEC imposed an oil embargo on countries viewed as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Oil prices rose sharply, damaging consumers and businesses and intensifying inflation in many industrial economies.

The stock-market decline also reflected the end of a long postwar expansion, high interest rates, recession fears, and political uncertainty connected with the Watergate scandal. In the United States, the bear market lasted roughly from early 1973 until October 1974.

The 1973–1974 crash is sometimes confused with the separate 1979 oil shock, which followed the Iranian Revolution. Both produced energy-price stress, but the earlier embargo was the event most closely associated with the 1973 market collapse.