WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · February 26, 2021

Yields jumped, and the 30-year high gave way

-3.99%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

From the COVID low to a 30-year high

midway through · 2020-03-19 → 2021-09-14, +85.29% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • On 26 February 2021 the Nikkei 225 fell 3.99%
  • That month the index had passed 30,000 for the first time in thirty years — since 1990
  • Then the ten-year US Treasury yield jumped sharply over a few days, set off by weak demand at a bond auction
  • Higher yields hit the names priced on distant profits first — chips and growth stocks
  • Yields were rising because the economy was expected to improve, so it was not simply bad news. The problem was the speed
  • What had lifted markets since COVID was a low interest rate, so when that shook, everything shook
  • In this stretch the index was 9.91% below its peak

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.