Nikkei 225 · August 19, 1991
The Soviet Coup Attempt
-5.95%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
When the bad loans surfaced
early in it · 1991-03-18 → 1992-08-18, -47.29% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 19 August 1991 — Nikkei 225 fell 5.95%, the day an attempted coup against Gorbachev began in Moscow
- What markets feared was a reversal of reform
- If the Cold War thaw were undone, military tension would rise again, with no way to predict energy prices or trade
- Japan was also a neighbouring country sharing a border with the Soviet Union. Geopolitical uncertainty arrived more directly than elsewhere
- The coup failed within three days and markets soon steadied
- Fell 19.01% from peak. The fundamental problem for Japanese equities then, though, was not geopolitics but the bubble collapse already under way
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.