WhyItDropped

KOSPI · January 6, 2015

The new year oil collapsed

-1.74%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Two years going nowhere

near the end of it · 2013-06-25 → 2015-04-23, +22.06% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The KOSPI fell 1.74% on the day
  • Oil fell below fifty dollars a barrel, about half its level six months earlier
  • Cheaper oil is normally good for a country importing all of its crude. Here it was read the other way
  • A price falling for want of demand signals a weak world economy, and for a country that earns by exporting that is the larger problem
  • At the same time Greece was heading for an early election and talk of leaving the euro had returned
  • It is a stretch showing that the same news reads in opposite directions depending on the situation

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.