Nikkei 225 · August 7, 2002

The day after the summer low

+3.51%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The twenty-year low

early in it · 2002-05-23 → 2003-04-28, -36.49% over the whole period

What happened that day?

7 August 2002 — the Nikkei 225 rose 3.51% to close at 9,834.40. No single cause can be pinned to the day
The index had fallen again the session before. This was a large one-day recovery from that level
Japan's problem that summer had two layers: the distrust of corporate numbers spreading from America, and its own banks' bad loans
When the shares a bank holds fall, its capital is cut. Less capital means less lending, and less lending makes the economy worse
So in Japan the channel from falling share prices to the real economy was more direct than elsewhere
From the late-May high to the 14 November low the index fell 30.69%
The episode ended only that autumn, when the government came out with a firm policy on clearing bank bad loans

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.