Nikkei 225 · August 2, 2001

A three-day bounce inside the slide

+3.68%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

September 11 and deflation

early in it · 2001-05-07 → 2002-02-06, -35.16% over the whole period

What happened that day?

2 August 2001 — the Nikkei 225 rose 3.68% to close at 12,399.20. No single cause can be pinned to the day
It was the third straight up session after weeks of sliding
A new prime minister had taken office that spring, and the hope attached to structural reform had risen once and was cooling
Reform means clearing bad assets off the books, and while they are being cleared the losses show up first. Hope and fear were attached to the same policy
The outside picture was poor too. The collapse in American technology spending was arriving as cancelled orders for Japanese components
The bounce did not end the episode. The index kept falling to its 17 September low
From the early-May high to the 17 September low the index fell 34.59%

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.