Nikkei 225 · January 4, 2008

Four days of news in the year's first session

-4.03%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Subprime reaches Tokyo

near the end of it · 2007-07-09 → 2008-03-17, -35.45% over the whole period

What happened that day?

4 January 2008 — the Nikkei 225 fell 4.03%. No single cause for that one day could be pinned down
Tokyo takes a long break at year end. Its previous session was 28 December, so everything since arrived at once
In between, US markets had opened the year with two straight down days
Oil had also traded at three figures a barrel for the first time. For a country that imports all of it, that is a direct cost
A strengthening yen was running alongside. A rising yen shrinks what exporters earn
A long closure makes the daily move bigger, because several days of change land in one session
From the October 2007 high to the March 2008 low the index fell 32.48%

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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.