KOSPI · March 20, 2003
The war began, and the market went up
+4.92%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Thirteen months as China started buying
early in it · 2003-03-17 → 2004-04-23, +81.67% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 20 March 2003 — the KOSPI rose 4.92%. This was the day the Iraq war began
- War usually pushes prices down; this day they rose. What the market could not price was not the war itself but whether there would be one
- Once the uncertainty is gone, even settled the bad way, a price can be set
- An expectation of a short war ran underneath it. A short war means cheaper oil, and cheaper oil helps a country that imports all of it
- The episode low had come three days earlier, on 17 March. This was a large gain just past the bottom
- From the December 2002 high to the March low the index fell 30.05%
- The KOSPI rose sharply off that bottom through the rest of the year. The turning point was not the war starting but the uncertainty ending
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.