Nikkei 225 · August 23, 1990
The Gulf Crisis — Oil Spike
-5.84%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The bubble's first leg down
near the end of it · 1989-12-29 → 1990-10-01, -48.04% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 23 August 1990 — Nikkei 225 fell 5.84%, during the oil spike that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait earlier that month
- Oil is a special variable for Japan. Importing nearly all its crude means a price rise feeds straight into production costs and the trade balance
- The memory of two oil shocks in the 1970s was still present
- The timing was bad. The bubble had already begun deflating, and the Bank of Japan was raising rates to contain inflation
- Higher oil gave it another reason to raise them further
- Fell 39.08% from peak — a deep decline in the first year of the bubble's collapse
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.