WhyItDropped

KOSPI · May 25, 2010

The day Greece met tension on the peninsula

-2.75%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

A month of Greece and the flash crash

near the end of it · 2010-04-26 → 2010-05-25, -10.92% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The KOSPI fell 2.75% on the day — the bottom of this decline
  • Worry was growing that the Greek problem would spread. A Spanish bank was taken into government administration around this time
  • Military tension on the Korean peninsula was rising at the same time. It is a rare stretch where external and domestic factors worked together
  • In such moments the won weakens sharply and foreign investors sell out. Geopolitical risk directly lowers what people will pay for Korean assets
  • The mark such tension leaves on prices is usually short, though. This was the bottom and recovery began at once
  • The advance from here ran into early the following year, carrying the KOSPI past its record high

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.