Global financial markets and cryptocurrencies have collapsed

Global financial markets showed record falls in quotes on Monday, August 5. Major Asian stock exchanges closed shortly after the start of trading. The main indicator of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei 225 index , repeated the rate of decline of 37 years ago. At the opening of trading in Europe, shares of American technology companies collapsed . Cryptocurrencies set anti-records for price decline.

Japanese stock indexes have repeated or worsened the performance of Black Monday on October 20, 1987, when the last price collapse of such magnitude occurred, Bloomberg analysts noted . The Topix index of Japanese companies with large capitalization lost 12.23% (falling to 2227.15 points). Nikkei, which includes shares of 225 of Japan's largest companies, lost 12.4% (falling to 31,458.42 points).

The MSCI Asia Pacific stock index fell nearly 5%, to levels seen at the start of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Japan's Toyota Motor and Mitsubishi, South Korea's Samsung, and Taiwan's semiconductor maker TSMC led the declines. Taiwan's Taiex and Korea's Kospi fell about 8%.

Immediately after the opening of European trading platforms, quotes also began to fall there. The Istanbul Stock Exchange index fell by 6.7%, the Deutsche Boerse, CAC 40, and Stoxx 50 indices fell by about 3%. On the German Tradegate exchange, stocks set a record for the fall in Europe on Monday — the quotes of the American Nvidia fell by up to 17%, while Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla shares fell by 9-10%. Closer to lunch, the quotes of almost all stocks began to gradually recover from the fall, but they remain below or at the level of Friday, August 2.

It was on Friday that the sell-off of large, primarily technology, companies began, Reuters analysts reported . Experts cited several reasons: an increase in the number of applications for unemployment benefits in the United States, an eight-month anti-record for the American business activity index, and the rise in the yen exchange rate amid the Bank of Japan's increase in the key rate from 0.01% to 0.25% — the highest in 15 years.

Following the stock exchanges, "Black Monday" happened on the global crypto market. Bitcoin fell in price by 18% in a few hours to $50,000 per coin. The first cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell at such a speed last time in February 2021. The value of the second cryptocurrency by capitalization, Ethereum, fell by about one and a half times, to $2.1 thousand.

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