Nikkei 225 · October 27, 2008
The Lehman collapse
-50.56%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
97 trading days · 2008-06-06 → 2008-10-27
back to the old high on 2013-05-10
What happened that day?
- From the high on 6 June 2008 to the low on 27 October, the Nikkei fell 50.56% in 97 trading days
- On 15 September a large US investment bank went bankrupt. What shocked people was the decision not to rescue it
- Until then the market had assumed the big ones get saved. Once that broke, nobody trusted anybody
- Money simply stopped circulating. Perfectly sound companies could not borrow overnight
- Japan held almost none of the bad paper and still fell as hard as anywhere — because the yen carry trade unwound
- The low on 27 October was 7,163, back at 1982 levels
- The level it fell from was not regained until May 2013
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.