Chapter 1005: Painfully Cutting Away Flesh
Though using policy to stimulate the economy was somewhat crude, it had the advantage of being simple and effective. No sooner had the Vienna Government announced the "Ring Railway" plan than the market responded.
When the Vienna stock market opened on April 26, 1894, the infrastructure sector led the broader market with a 7-point jump. It briefly broke through 20 points during the session before closing with an 11.6% gain for the sector.
Steel, cement, engineering machinery, banking, and other sectors related to railway construction also rebounded in turn.
Driven by this, the Vienna stock market as a whole rebounded by 3.62%, its largest recovery since the stock market crash began.
And then there was no then. Since the crash erupted, the Vienna market had fallen all the way down. At its worst, it had plunged 74.3% from its peak. Even after this rebound, the index stood at only 30% of its peak level.
With the overall market having fallen so miserably, one could imagine the extent to which market confidence had collapsed. There was no helping it—the freely developing stock market was simply that willful.
By comparison, the infrastructure and steel sectors were doing fairly well. As mature industries, their market ceiling was laid out plainly before everyone. Their valuations had never been high to begin with, and they were supported by major postwar reconstruction projects, so naturally they could not fall very far.
After this wave of recovery, they had basically regained three-quarters of their peak market value and could barely be said to have emerged from the crisis.
The true disaster zone of the crash was the emerging technology sector. With no performance to support them, their market values had been propped up by nothing but a "good story." Once the