The Nikkei 225 fell nearly 80% from its 1989 peak during Japan’s asset-price crash.
The index reached an intraday record of 38,957.44 on December 29, 1989. After Japan’s property and equity bubble burst, the Nikkei entered a prolonged decline; by October 2008 it had fallen to roughly one-fifth of its peak, a drop of about 80%.
The crash was followed by years of weak growth, falling asset prices, banking stress, and deflation, a period often called Japan’s Lost Decades. The Nikkei is a price-weighted index of 225 major companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It is not the same as TOPIX, which is a broader, capitalization-weighted measure of Japanese equities.