Nikkei 225 · February 12, 2016
The day negative rates backfired
-4.84%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
When negative rates backfired
near the end of it · 2015-12-01 → 2016-02-12, -25.28% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nikkei 225 fell 4.84% on the day — the bottom of this decline
- Two weeks earlier the Bank of Japan had introduced negative interest rates for the first time, charging a fee on deposits to push banks into lending
- The aim was a weaker yen, and the opposite happened. The yen strengthened sharply right after the announcement
- The reason is that the market read the measure as ineffective. Once a step is taken as a signal that nothing is left, the currency starts being treated as a safe asset instead
- Worries about European banks and a collapsing oil price landed at the same time, and world markets fell together
- The recovery that began at this bottom ran to October 2018
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.