Nikkei 225 · April 28, 2003
The twenty-year low
-36.49%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
230 trading days · 2002-05-23 → 2003-04-28
back to the old high on 2004-04-06
What happened that day?
- From the high on 23 May 2002 to the low on 28 April 2003, the Nikkei fell 36.49% over 230 trading days
- The low was 7,608 — the lowest since 1982, and about a fifth of the 1989 peak
- In this period the government finally forced the banks to recognise their bad loans
- Cleaning up hurts in the short run. Recognising losses eats bank capital, and lending shrinks with it
- The Iraq war and a global respiratory epidemic landed on top of that
- Even so, this bottom was the turning point. The run that began here lasted more than four years
- The high it fell from was regained in under a year
Sources
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.