KOSPI · October 12, 1998

The day global rate cuts landed together

+7.38%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Korea's post-IMF rebound

midway through · 1998-06-16 → 1999-04-27, +183.56% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The KOSPI rose 7.38% on the day
The US Fed cut rates three times that autumn, one of them urgently and outside a scheduled meeting
It moved urgently because a large hedge fund had collapsed and shaken the financial system, in the aftermath of Russia declaring it would not pay its debts
That worked the other way for Asia. When US rates fall, money that fled emerging markets comes back
At home, reserves were rebuilding and the exchange rate was steadying
It is the stretch in which a country that had nearly defaulted in November 1997 became, within a year, a country money was flowing into

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.