Crisis Decoder: Plan to Spot Financial Trouble with Simple Math

Objective

Conduct an in-depth yet beginner study of the world’s most notorious market collapses—1929 Great Depression, 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the 2020 COVID Meltdown—through the lens of mathematics and spreadsheets.

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Key Takeaways

• Crash Walk-throughs: Plain-English stories of the 1929 Great Depression, 1997 Asian Crisis, 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and 2020 COVID Shock.

• Toolbox : price charts (Yahoo Finance), Google Sheets formulas for % change, averages, volatility.

Expected Impact

students can learn that classroom math can decode real markets.And Retail investors gain a data-backed alternative to gut feelings.

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Preface

When COVID-19 sent the markets into free fall, I watched my own family’s finances get battered. That personal shock made me wonder: Is it really impossible to spot these avalanches before they strike? Curious about the early warning tremors that preceded past crashes, I launched this blog to investigate—and to see whether freshman-level math and spreadsheet can turn market chaos into something we can measure and, maybe, anticipate.

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Analytical Framework

Step	Action
Collect Data	Download daily prices for KOSPI & S&P 500; copy 10–20 finance headlines.
Compute Basics	5-day average, 20-day volatility.
Score Sentiment	+1 for positive words, –1 for negative; average daily.
Spot Stress