Nikkei 225 · January 17, 1991
The day the war started and stocks rose
+4.47%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The first bounce
midway through · 1990-10-01 → 1991-03-18, +34.25% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 17 January 1991 the Nikkei 225 rose 4.47%
- Coalition aircraft began striking Iraq in the early hours of that day
- There is only one reason stocks rise when a war starts: the not-knowing ends
- Oil actually collapsed once the strikes began, as people concluded it would be short
- Markets do not price the event; they price whether the event is already in the price. Once it is, confirmation is good news
- In this stretch the index was 13.77% below its peak
- The war was over in six weeks
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.