WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · May 7, 2012

The weekend Europe held two elections

-2.78%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Europe's third wave

midway through · 2012-03-27 → 2012-06-04, -19.11% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nikkei fell 2.78% on the day — the second-worst single session of this decline
  • Over the weekend France had changed government, and on the same day a Greek election left no party with a majority
  • The euro crisis prescription until then had been to cut spending in order to cut debt. Both votes were votes against that prescription
  • With the politics holding it up now shaking, the question of whether the euro survived grew louder again
  • Japan was hit twice in this period: every time investors backed away from risk, the yen strengthened
  • The stretch ran to early June

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.