WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · January 8, 1992

Given back in two days

-3.61%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

When the bad loans surfaced

midway through · 1991-03-18 → 1992-08-18, -47.29% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 8 January 1992 the Nikkei 225 fell 3.61%
  • It handed back the gain from the first session of the year, two days earlier
  • A price lifted by expectation alone comes straight back down when the expectation cools
  • The Japanese economy really was deteriorating — earnings and land prices were both turning
  • No single trigger can be pinned to this day
  • In this stretch the index was 34.19% below its peak

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.