John F. Kennedy is the U.S. president associated with the 1962 stock-market decline known as the Kennedy Slide.
The Kennedy Slide was a sharp market fall during the spring and early summer of 1962, while Kennedy was president. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell substantially from its late-1961 peak, with the decline reflecting concerns about economic growth, corporate profits, interest rates, and international tensions.
The episode was not caused by one clearly established event. A widely discussed factor was the so-called “flash crash” of May 28, 1962, when the Dow suffered a dramatic one-day fall amid heavy trading and market uncertainty.
The name identifies the political period, not a formal claim that Kennedy personally caused the decline. The market later recovered, and the Kennedy Slide is generally treated as a correction within the postwar bull-market era rather than a depression-scale collapse.