KOSPI · August 16, 2007
The First Subprime Shock — KOSPI
-6.93%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The first subprime shock
near the end of it · 2007-07-25 → 2007-08-17, -18.27% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 16 August 2007 — KOSPI fell 6.93%, still more than a year before Lehman failed
- That summer, US funds holding subprime-linked assets suspended redemptions one after another, saying they couldn't price their holdings
- Once it was known that some assets couldn't be valued, suspicion spread to every institution that might hold something similar
- Korean equities had risen a lot that year. The more they'd risen, the more there was to give back — and profit-taking compounded it
- Fell 18.27% from peak
- The market soon recovered and set another high that autumn — but that was the last advance
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.