Nikkei 225 · March 17, 2008
The weekend a US investment bank was sold off
-3.71%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The bounce before the storm
early in it · 2008-03-17 → 2008-06-06, +22.92% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nikkei fell 3.71% on the day — the bottom of this fall and the start of the recovery
- Over the weekend one of America's five big investment banks had been handed to another for a pittance, with the Fed standing behind the deal
- Days earlier that bank had said its funding was fine. What this confirmed was that even such a firm could go in a matter of days
- For Japan the currency landed on top of it. The yen strengthened past 95 to the dollar that day, its strongest in twelve years
- A stronger yen cuts straight into the profits of Japanese exporters. That is usually why the Nikkei falls harder than the US market
- A recovery into early June followed. That relief ended in September of the same 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.