Nikkei 225 · May 15, 1992

The spring the bank books mattered

-3.88%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

When the bad loans surfaced

near the end of it · 1991-03-18 → 1992-08-18, -47.29% over the whole period

What happened that day?

On 15 May 1992 the Nikkei 225 fell 3.88%
The topic of the period was the size of the losses sitting in the banks. Nobody knew the real figure
Banks had lent against land, and land prices were still falling
The market assumed the officially reported figure was too small, so bank shares kept sliding
When bank shares slide the index slides, because banks were a very large part of it
No single trigger can be pinned to this day
In this stretch the index was 35.37% below its peak

Sources

Lost Decades
Japanese asset price bubble

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.