There have been no reports of stockbrokers standing on window ledges — yet — but following Friday’s €3 billion share price collapse in Dublin, the Irish stock market has suffered a bigger sell-off in the past year than any major stock exchange in history. The fall puts it on a par with the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Shane Whelan, a stock market historian at University College Dublin, said the Iseq index, which tracks movements on the Irish stock market, has dropped 53% in the past 12 months after dividends were reinvested and the effects of inflation were taken into account.

“We’re looking at a one-in-100 years event,” he said.

American equities plunged 60% during the Wall Street crash, but that drop occurred over a three-year period from 1929 to 1931. Wall Street lost 52% in real terms during the oil shocks of 1973 and 1974, and 42% during the dotcom bust of 2000 to 2002.

The good news is that the Iseq has rebounded quickly from previous slumps.

“If you held your nerve in the past, you always got a rebound, and quite a sizeable rebound in some cases,” said Whelan.

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