Nikkei 225 · October 1, 1990

The bubble's first leg down

-48.04%

peak-to-trough, the whole slide

186 trading days · 1989-12-29 → 1990-10-01

back to the old high on 2024-02-22

What happened that day?

On 29 December 1989 the Nikkei 225 closed at 38,915, an all-time high, on the last session of the year
From the next session it fell without relief, down 48.04% by 1 October 1990 — 186 trading days
It began with rates. The Bank of Japan had been raising since May 1989, aiming squarely at land and share prices
The Gulf crisis in August pushed oil up and added a second shock
The size of the bubble was the real problem. People had calculated that the land under Tokyo was worth more than all the land in America
That high was not passed again until 22 February 2024 — thirty-four years
This is the first leg of what Japan calls the lost decades

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.