Global growth was believed to have peaked in 2017, when the world's total industrial sector output began to start a sustained decline in early 2018.

The International Monetary Fund had pointed to other mitigating factors seen before the pandemic, such as a global synchronized slowdown in 2019, as exacerbants to the crash, especially given that the market was already vulnerable.

[70][71] On Monday, 24 February 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and FTSE 100 dropped more than 3% as the coronavirus outbreak spread worsened substantially outside China over the weekend.

[106] The sudden drop in late February was attributed to fears that China could produce a global economic shock, primarily due to quarantines imposed by the state to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time was classified as an epidemic.

[108] Concerning reports of the viruses spread in South Korea, Italy and Iran also prompted fear in investors, mounting to a mass sell-off in Asia-Pacific stock markets as well as European ones.

[116] On 3 March, the finance ministers and central bank executives of the G7 countries released a joint statement to "reaffirm our commitment to use all appropriate policy tools" to address the socioeconomic impact of the outbreak including "fiscal measures where appropriate" with the central banks continuing to "fulfill their mandates, thus supporting price stability and economic growth.

[121] Also on 3 March, due to the Bank of Mexico declining to cut its overnight rate further,[122] Mexican Finance Minister Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez announced a fiscal stimulus program to accelerate government spending.

[141] Oil futures rose following reports of OPEC agreeing to production cuts with Russia,[142] while the yields on 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury securities fell to 0.91% and 1.54% respectively.

[151] U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law an emergency appropriations and pandemic countermeasures bill including $8.3 billion in government spending.

[162] Former George W. Bush administration energy policy advisor Bob McNally noted, "This is the first time since 1930 and '31 that a massive negative demand shock has coincided with a supply shock;"[163] in that case it was the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act precipitating a collapse in international trade during the Great Depression, coinciding with discovery of the East Texas Oil Field during the Texas oil boom.

[31][32][165][33] Over the previous weekend, on 8 March, the TA-35 and TA-125 Indices of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange fell by 4.5% and 4.7% respectively,[166] entering bear markets from their 19 February peaks.

[list 1] The United States' Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 2000 points,[171] described by The News International as "the biggest ever fall in intraday trading.

[181][182] BP and Shell Oil experienced intraday price drops of nearly 20%[183] The FTSE MIB, CAC 40, and DAX tanked as well, with Italy affected the most as the COVID-19 pandemic in the country continues.

[201] As the hashtag #BlackMonday trended on Twitter,[202] news organizations such as the Associated Press,[203] The Economist,[204] and Yahoo Finance UK adopted the term on the day it occurred.

[206] The Associated Press also quoted an analyst of the Australian finance company OFX as saying, "A blend of shocks have sent the markets into a frenzy on what may only be described as 'Black Monday' ... A combination of a Russia vs. Saudi Arabia oil price war, a crash in equities, and escalations in coronavirus woes have created a killer cocktail to worsen last week's hangover.

[216] while Bank Indonesia conducted open market purchases of government bonds and Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani announced tax-related stimulus.

Trump's initial statements were later corrected: the ban affected people who were not US citizens and who in the past two weeks had visited the 26-member Schengen Area, but did not include trade goods and cargo and excluded the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

[233] Carmen Reinicke of Business Insider wrote that Trump's address to the nation "failed to calm investors' concerns about the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak".

[257] The US's Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 suffered from the greatest single-day percentage fall since the 1987 stock market crash, as did the UK's FTSE 100, which fell 10.87%.

[274][275][276][277] President Trump reacted to the crash by defending his travel ban and predicting that the stock market would eventually recover with central bank intervention.

[295] The People's Bank of China announced that it would reduce its reserve requirement by 50 to 100 basis points from the current 12.5%, releasing $79 billion into the money supply.

[373] U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced legislation for a third fiscal stimulus package of up to $1 trillion that includes cash payments to households under $75,000 in adjusted gross income (with $1,200 per individual, $2,400 for couples, and $500 per child) and $208 billion for industries severely distressed by the pandemic.

[399] The finance ministers and central bank executives of the G20 countries agreed to develop a joint action plan to address the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[425] South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that a planned fiscal stimulus package would be doubled in size to ₩100 trillion ($80 billion).

[438] The South African Reserve Bank announced a quantitative easing program of open market purchases of an unspecified amount of government bonds.

[453] The Indonesian government announced that it would issue bonds whose proceeds would dedicated for financial assistance programs to business severely distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

[455] The Bank of Korea announced that it would conduct open-ended open market purchases of government bonds at repo auctions every Tuesday for the following three months.

"[501] On 11 June, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1861 points, around 7%,[502] as fears of a second wave of COVID-19 along with a press conference from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell on the previous day weighed on investor sentiment.

On 16 September, Jerome Powell and the FOMC gave their final economic projections, which led the DJIA falling approximately 4% over the next three days.

Throughout September, the DJIA saw a substantial −9% retreat amidst growing fears of a second COVID-19 infection wave, lack of federal stimulus outlook, and U.S. election instability.