WhyItDropped

KOSPI · August 16, 2011

The August that swung every other day

+4.83%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The euro crisis and the US downgrade

near the end of it · 2011-05-02 → 2011-09-26, -25.85% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The KOSPI rose 4.83% on the day
  • Early that week the US credit rating had been cut for the first time ever, and the KOSPI had fallen hard over several sessions
  • This gain came not from fresh news but from having fallen too far. Days of large moves in alternating directions ran through this period
  • That pattern appears when neither buyers nor sellers have conviction. Small news then moves prices a lot
  • Korea was shaken by Europe's problem less through direct trade than through money flows. Capital fleeing risk leaves emerging markets first
  • This phase bottomed on 26 September, and recovery began when the ECB opened long-term lending to banks

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.