Nikkei 225 · October 16, 2008
Global Financial Crisis — Nikkei
-11.41%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Lehman collapse
near the end of it · 2008-06-06 → 2008-10-27, -50.56% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 16 October 2008 — Nikkei 225 fell 11.41%
- But the defining feature is duration, not any single day: twelve sessions in this stretch cleared the threshold
- After Lehman failed, banks stopped trusting each other and short-term funding markets froze
- Japanese banks' direct losses were comparatively small, but the yen surged, wrecking exporters' earnings outlook
- Japan's index is heavily weighted toward exporters, making it unusually currency-sensitive. Because the yen is a haven in a crisis, a global panic hits Japan twice
- Fell 51.19% from peak — the deepest on this list, taking years to recover
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.