WhyItDropped

KOSPI · March 24, 2020

The 2020 swap line and the KOSPI

+8.60%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Korea's COVID rebound

early in it · 2020-03-19 → 2020-11-23, +78.55% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 24 March 2020 the KOSPI rose 8.6% in a single day
  • The COVID crash had sent the won sliding, and fears of a dollar shortage like 2008 were back
  • On 19 March the Bank of Korea announced a renewed currency swap line with the US Federal Reserve
  • Being able to borrow dollars when needed steadied the exchange rate quickly
  • The Fed's unlimited bond-buying announcement in the same window turned global markets as well
  • 19 March was the KOSPI's low, and the rebound from there ran to the old high on 23 November

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.