KOSPI · May 17, 2004
The day an Indian election knocked over Asia
-5.14%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Three months as China hit the brakes
early in it · 2004-04-23 → 2004-08-02, -23.13% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The KOSPI fell 5.14% on the day — the second-worst single day of this decline
- Days earlier India's general election had unseated the governing party, and markets worried that reform would stall
- India's market fell so hard that day that trading was halted twice
- At the same time China was tightening lending to cool an overheating economy — the buyer that had been absorbing the world's raw materials was stepping back
- On top of that came the expectation that the US would soon raise rates. That combination pulls money out of emerging markets all at once
- Korea had little direct exposure to India, but to foreign investors it sat in the same emerging-market bucket
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.