Nikkei 225 · February 14, 2008

The day after Washington signed the rebate bill

+4.27%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Subprime reaches Tokyo

near the end of it · 2007-07-09 → 2008-03-17, -35.45% over the whole period

What happened that day?

14 February 2008 — the Nikkei 225 rose 4.27%
The day before, Washington had signed a stimulus bill: cash into households through tax rebates
The logic was that propping up American consumption props up Japanese exports. Tokyo's large caps were heavily geared to the US cycle
Still, no single cause for that one day could be pinned down. Daily swings in Tokyo were wide all through this stretch
The bounce changed nothing. The index kept falling into mid-March
America's mortgage losses were already visible by then. That they would take down the banks themselves was only clear half a year later
From the October 2007 high to the March 2008 low the index fell 31.09%

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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.