KOSPI · March 19, 2020

The day the KOSPI hit bottom

-8.39%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

A third gone in two months

near the end of it · 2020-01-22 → 2020-03-19, -35.71% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The KOSPI fell 8.39% on the day — the last session of the covid crash, and its bottom
Trading was halted during the session. That mechanism does not fire often
The problem in this period was dollars more than the disease. As the world reached for cash at once, the won weakened sharply
A weaker won makes foreign investors sell shares and convert to dollars. The reason for selling stops having anything to do with Korean company results
The very next day the Bank of Korea and the US Fed announced a currency swap — the same measure that had worked in 2008
The tide turned from that announcement, and the KOSPI rose for eight months from here

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.