Japan’s stock exchange recorded the Nikkei 225’s all-time closing high in December 1989.
The Nikkei 225 closed at 38,915.87 on December 29, 1989, at the height of Japan’s late-1980s asset-price bubble. The index tracked major companies listed in Tokyo, and its peak reflected soaring share and land prices, easy credit, and intense investor optimism.
The bubble burst around the start of the 1990s. Japanese stock prices fell for years, while falling land values weakened banks, businesses, and households. Japan then experienced a prolonged period often called the Lost Decades. The December 1989 peak is sometimes confused with an intraday record or with later recoveries. The precise figure above is the closing record, and it remained unbroken for decades. The Nikkei eventually returned to comparable levels only in the 2020s.