WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · September 26, 1990

The last drop before the bottom

-4.75%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The bubble's first leg down

near the end of it · 1989-12-29 → 1990-10-01, -48.04% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 26 September 1990 the Nikkei 225 fell 4.75%
  • It was three sessions before the low on 1 October
  • The last days of a slide are usually the steepest, because the holdouts finally change their minds
  • Over these nine months the index fell 48.04% from its peak — nearly half of it gone
  • No single trigger can be pinned to this day
  • In this stretch the index was 39.08% 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.