WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · March 4, 2002

A jump inside the lost decades (4 Mar 2002)

+5.90%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Japan's lost decades

midway through · 1989-12-29 → 2009-03-10, -81.87% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 4 March 2002 the Nikkei 225 rose 5.9% in a single day
  • It sits inside the long decline that ran from the late-1989 peak to the 2009 low
  • A twenty-year fall does not mean losing a little every day. There were many large bounces, and this was one
  • Bad loans and deflation remained unresolved through this period, and the market reacted strongly whenever a government measure appeared
  • No single trigger is pinned to this day
  • The Nikkei did not pass its 1989 high again until February 2024

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.