WhyItDropped

KOSPI · October 31, 2023

Three months of rates staying higher

-14.59%

peak-to-trough, the whole slide

59 trading days · 2023-08-01 → 2023-10-31

still below that peak today

What happened that day?

  • From the high on 1 August 2023 to the low on 31 October, the KOSPI fell 14.59% over 59 trading days
  • The US ten-year yield rose sharply across these three months, to its highest in sixteen years
  • What marks this out is that yields rose on supply rather than inflation. The US government needed to borrow more, so more bonds came to market
  • A rating agency downgraded the US government's credit in the same period
  • Trouble at Chinese property developers resurfaced at the same time. Korea is directly exposed to China's economy
  • Armed conflict in the Middle East from October added further uncertainty
  • The correction ended once it was confirmed that the US central bank had stopped raising

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.