Nikkei 225 · December 25, 2018

The fourth-quarter selloff

-21.07%

peak-to-trough, the whole slide

57 trading days · 2018-10-02 → 2018-12-25

back to the old high on 2020-11-06

What happened that day?

From the high on 2 October 2018 to the low on 25 December, the Nikkei fell 21.07% over 57 trading days
That high was the highest since 1991 — twenty-seven years to get there, and then this
There were two causes. The US Fed raised four times that year, and the US–China trade dispute was widening
Japan was exposed to both: higher rates pull global money out, and blocked trade cuts exports
On 25 December alone the index fell more than five percent. Falls that size on Christmas are rare
The Fed turned the following year and the index recovered
This particular high, though, was not regained until November 2020

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.