Japan's Nikkei 225 reached a peak closing value of 38,915.87 before the country's 1990s market crash.
The index recorded that closing high on 29 December 1989, near the end of Japan's asset-price bubble. During the bubble, abundant credit, rising land prices, and strong optimism pushed Japanese share prices to historically high levels.
After the peak, the Nikkei 225 fell sharply as the Bank of Japan tightened policy and the speculative boom unwound. The decline was part of the broader Japanese asset-price bubble's collapse, which also involved commercial land and residential property. Japan then entered a prolonged period of weak growth and financial stress often called the Lost Decades.
The 38,915.87 figure is a closing value, not the index's intraday high. The Nikkei's later recovery above that level took decades, so the 1989 peak remains one of the most recognizable milestones in modern stock-market history.