WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · August 27, 1990

Just before the last hike

+4.04%

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 27 August 1990 the Nikkei 225 rose 4.04%
  • Three days later the Bank of Japan raised its discount rate to six percent — the sixth and last hike since May 1989
  • The Gulf crisis had pushed oil up and with it the fear of inflation, which supplied the reason
  • That hike ended the bubble for good. Rates would not return to that level for nearly twenty years
  • 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.