KOSPI · October 16, 2008
The worst single day of the crisis
-9.44%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The KOSPI in the financial crisis
near the end of it · 2007-10-31 → 2008-10-24, -54.54% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The KOSPI fell 9.44% on the day, the largest single-day drop of the crisis phase
- US shares had broken hard the previous session, as weak retail sales showed the real economy had already turned
- Until then the crisis had looked like something inside finance. From this point it was confirmed to be spreading into spending and production
- Korea had the dollar problem on top. There was deep worry that banks could not repay dollars they had borrowed short-term
- A weaker won makes foreign investors sell and leave, which weakens the won further — that loop was running
- The bottom came eight sessions later on 24 October, and recovery began ten days after that with the Korea-US currency swap
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.