WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · September 22, 1999

The autumn the yen got dear again

-3.39%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The IT rally

midway through · 1998-10-09 → 2000-04-12, +61.75% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 22 September 1999 the Nikkei 225 fell 3.39%
  • The yen had been strengthening since that summer, on expectations that Japan's economy was turning
  • Good economic news is bad news for exporters here, because it makes the yen dearer
  • The Bank of Japan wanted to intervene, but without US agreement the effect was limited
  • With rates already at zero, there was no way to push the yen down with policy either
  • In this stretch the index was 9.24% below its peak
  • The up-stretch still ran to April the following year

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.