KOSPI · October 30, 2008
The day Korea got a dollar swap line
+11.95%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Four months of testing the bottom twice
early in it · 2008-10-24 → 2009-03-02, +8.53% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 30 October 2008 the KOSPI rose 11.95% in a single day
- What Korea feared most that autumn was running out of dollars. The memory of 1997 was still fresh
- On 30 October the Bank of Korea announced a currency swap line with the US Federal Reserve
- In plain terms it secured a facility to borrow dollars when needed, and the fear of reserves running dry dropped sharply
- The won steadied immediately and foreign selling eased
- This announcement is what made the floor. The low had come days earlier on 24 October, and the recovery started here
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.