Nikkei 225 · August 5, 2011
The week America was downgraded
-3.72%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Europe again, and a record yen
early in it · 2011-07-08 → 2011-11-25, -19.51% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 5 August 2011 the Nikkei 225 fell 3.72%
- That night the United States lost its top credit rating for the first time in history
- In the same week Italian and Spanish bond yields spiked and Europe's crisis deepened
- When the asset everyone treats as safest is shaken, the yardstick for every other calculation shakes with it
- Money reducing risk crowded into the yen, which returned to record strength
- For Japan, the flight to safety is itself the damage
- In this stretch the index was 19.51% below its peak
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.