Nikkei 225 · March 31, 2003

The last day of the fiscal year

-3.71%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The twenty-year low

near the end of it · 2002-05-23 → 2003-04-28, -36.49% over the whole period

What happened that day?

31 March 2003 — the Nikkei 225 fell 3.71% to close at 7,972.71. No single cause can be pinned to the day
It was the last trading day of Japan's fiscal year. Banks and insurers mark their shareholdings to this closing price
So a low price here cuts straight into financial-sector capital. Less capital means less lending, and less lending makes the economy worse
A war had started in the Middle East ten days before. Whether it would be short or long changed by the day
The low of this episode came a month later, on 28 April — the lowest close since the bubble burst
After that the index turned. Public money went into one bank and the market settled on the view that the worst was behind
From the early-December 2002 high to the 28 April low the index fell 17.35%

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.