Nikkei 225 · March 15, 2011
Tōhoku Earthquake
-10.55%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Tōhoku earthquake
near the end of it · 2011-02-21 → 2011-03-15, -20.74% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck on Friday 11 March 2011. The Nikkei 225's largest fall came on 15 March, the second trading day of the following week — down 10.55%
- The lag was about information. On the day itself the scale of the damage was unknown
- Over the following days conditions at Fukushima Daiichi deteriorated and the worst case kept being revised
- What the market priced wasn't the earthquake but the state of not knowing how bad it would get
- The economic impact was real: power shortages limited factory output, and broken component supply chains reached manufacturers abroad that looked unconnected to Japan
- Fell 20.74% from peak — shallower than the financial crisis, with a comparatively quick recovery
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.