Nikkei 225 · March 10, 2009
Japan's lost decades
-81.87%
peak-to-trough, the whole slide
4,725 trading days · 1989-12-29 → 2009-03-10
back to the old high on 2024-02-22
What happened that day?
- From the 29 December 1989 peak to the 10 March 2009 low the Nikkei 225 fell 81.87% — 4,725 trading days
- Late-1980s Japan had land and stocks booming together. People joked that Tokyo real estate alone could buy the United States
- Banks lent against land, the loans went back into land and shares, and the loop inflated the bubble
- The Bank of Japan raised rates sharply from 1989 and the loop broke. When land prices turned, the collateral behind the loans went with them
- Banks stuck with bad loans could not make new ones, so the recovery kept getting postponed. The stall lasted more than twenty years
- The Nikkei passed its 1989 high again on 22 February 2024 — 34 years later
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.