Nikkei 225 · March 21, 2001

Quantitative easing begins

+7.49%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Two months on a new prime minister

early in it · 2001-03-13 → 2001-05-07, +22.93% over the whole period

What happened that day?

On 21 March 2001 the Nikkei 225 rose 7.49% in a single day
It came right after the Bank of Japan launched quantitative easing — the first central bank anywhere to do so
Rates were already at zero and could go no lower, so it switched from the price of money to the quantity of it
In practice it set a target for the balances banks hold at the central bank and filled them to that level
The US and Europe later took this approach straight off the shelf during the financial crisis
In Japan at the time the effect was limited, because banks tied up in bad loans could not expand lending

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.