WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · October 24, 2008

Tokyo's panic week

-9.60%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The Lehman collapse

near the end of it · 2008-06-06 → 2008-10-27, -50.56% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 24 October 2008 the Nikkei 225 fell 9.6% in a single day
  • The crisis was at its worst, and Japan had an extra problem — the yen was surging
  • In a crisis money moves into the yen as a haven. On top of that, positions funded by borrowed yen were being unwound in a hurry, pushing demand higher still
  • A dearer yen shrinks Japanese exporters' overseas revenue once converted back. Earnings get cut directly
  • Tokyo was taking the global crisis and a currency shock at the same time
  • This week was near the low of the decline, and a few days later the coordinated rescue produced a large bounce

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.