NIKKEI NOUN (BUSINESS WORLD)

Used attributively in Nikkei index, Nikkei (stock) average, etc.: an index of the relative prices of representative shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (also known informally as the Nikkei Dow (or Nikkei Dow Jones) average). Etymology: A borrowing from Japanese; it is formed from the initial syllables of the first two words of Nihon Keizai Shimbun 'Japanese Economic Journal', the title of Japan's main financial newspaper, where the index is compiled and published (compare Footsie). History and Usage: The Tokyo Stock Exchange calculated its own stock average from 1949; this work was taken over by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in 1974. In the late seventies and eighties Western economic and financial sources started to publish figures from the Nikkei index and Nikkei was frequently mentioned in television and radio reports, bringing the word into popular use alongside Footsie and Dow. Like Dow Jones, Nikkei is sometimes used on its own as a short form of Nikkei average, etc. A major aim of the $90 million fund is to negotiate the region's sky-high p/e multiples and towering 28,000 Nikkei Dow without giving its investors nosebleeds. Financial World 20 Sept. 1988, p. 51 The Nikkei average plummeted 1,978.38, or 6.6 per cent, to close at its low for the day of 28,002.07--its steepest decline since just after New York's Black Monday crash in October 1987, when the Nikkei dropped 3,936.48 points. Financial Times 3 Apr. 1990, p. 41