Nikkei 225 · August 15, 1990
A retrace inside the Gulf crisis
+5.40%
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?
- On 15 August 1990 the Nikkei 225 rose 5.4%
- Iraq had invaded Kuwait on 2 August and oil prices had jumped
- Japan imports nearly all its oil. Higher oil means higher costs and a worse trade balance
- So Tokyo fell especially hard, and retraced hard in proportion
- No single trigger can be pinned to this day
- In this stretch the index was 39.08% below its peak
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.