WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · March 13, 2020

COVID-19 Crash — Nikkei

-6.08%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The COVID crash

near the end of it · 2020-01-20 → 2020-03-19, -31.27% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • 13 March 2020 — Nikkei 225 fell 6.08%, two days after the WHO characterised COVID-19 as a pandemic
  • Japan was preparing to host the Olympics that summer
  • As the games became doubtful, the outlook for tourism, construction and retail wobbled at once. The postponement was decided shortly afterwards
  • The yen compounded it: the pattern of the currency strengthening in a crisis repeated, worsening exporters' outlook
  • Fell 31.27% from peak
  • In the recovery that followed, though, Japanese equities went on to rise strongly over the next several years

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.