On what date did Japan’s Nikkei 225 reach its all-time peak before the asset-price crash?

Japan’s Nikkei 225 reached its all-time peak on December 29, 1989, just before the country’s asset-price crash deepened.

The index closed at 38,915.87 that day. Its spectacular rise reflected the late-1980s Japanese asset-price bubble, when property and shares became extremely expensive amid rapid credit growth and optimistic expectations.

After the peak, Japanese share prices fell sharply. The decline was not a single-day collapse like the 1987 Black Monday crash; it developed into a prolonged market and economic downturn. The Nikkei lost more than half its value during 1990, and Japan entered a period often associated with the “lost decade.”

The 1989 peak is sometimes confused with the later date when the market reached its post-bubble low. The Nikkei’s low came in 2009, during the global financial crisis, nearly two decades after the bubble-era high.