Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed at 38,915.87 on December 29, 1989, its bubble-era peak.
The record came at the end of a spectacular Japanese asset-price boom. Easy credit, rising land values, strong corporate confidence, and intense speculation pushed Japanese shares and property prices to extraordinary levels. The Nikkei’s peak became a symbol of the late-1980s bubble.
The bubble burst soon afterward. Equity and real-estate prices fell for years, damaging banks and businesses and contributing to Japan’s prolonged economic stagnation, often called the Lost Decades. The Nikkei’s 1989 record was not surpassed until 2024, when the index finally moved above that historic level. The Nikkei 225 is a price-weighted index, so its quoted level should not be compared directly with the value of a market-capitalization-weighted index such as the S&P 500.