Japan’s stocks confirmed the bear market Monday, as Asia-Pacific markets continued to sell off from last week. The Nikkei and Topix fell over 12%.

The benchmark indices have dropped more than 20 percent from their highs of July 11.

The Nikkei Index suffered its worst day since “Black Monday” in 1987, when it lost 12.4% of its value and closed at 31,458.42. The index lost 4,451.28 of its points, which is the biggest loss in the history of the index.

Nikkei has also lost all of its gains this year and is now in a negative position for the year.

Topix, the broad-based index, also suffered a massive loss. It fell 12.23% to close at 2,227.15.

Heavyweight trading companies such as Mitsubishi and Co, Sumitomo and Marubeni, all fell over 14%. Mitsui lost almost 20% of its total market capitalization.

The decline on Monday follows a rout that occurred Friday, when Japan’s Nikkei and Topix both fell by more than 5% each. Topix, the broader index, had its worst day for eight years. Nikkei’s worst day was since March 2020.

The yen strengthened against the dollar on Monday, reaching its highest level since January. It was last traded at 142.09.

South Korea’s Kospi dropped 8.77% to close at 2,441.55, while the Kodaq small-cap saw an 11.3% loss, ending at 691.28.

The exchanges, due to the severity of the selloff, hit circuit breakers and halted trading for the Kospi at 2.14 pm in Seoul, and at 1.56 pm for the Kosdaq. The 20-minute halt lasted. If the stock price rises or falls by 8%, circuit breakers will be activated.

Investors awaited this week’s key trade data coming from China and Taiwan, as well as the central bank decisions of Australia and India.

China’s service industry expanded faster in July. The country’s purchasing manager’s index rose to 52.1 from 51.2 in the previous month.

According to the Caixin survey, growth acceleration was due to new business growth that “was supported by sustained improvements in demand conditions as well as an expansion of service offerings.”

The Taiwan Weighted Index fell over 8% on the back of tech and real estate stocks, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 3.7% to 7,649.6.

Monday, the Reserve Bank of Australia begins its two-day meeting on monetary policy. Economists surveyed by Reuters anticipate the central bank will hold rates at 4.35%. However, markets will closely monitor the monetary statement to see if the RBA still considers a rate increase.

Hong Kong Hang Seng Index was down 1.62% in its final hour of trading, while mainland China’s CSI 300 dropped 1.21% to 3343.32, experiencing the smallest drop in Asia.

On Friday in the U.S., stocks fell sharply as a much weaker-than-anticipated jobs report for July ignited worries that the economy could be falling into a recession.

Nasdaq, the largest of the major benchmarks, was the first to enter correction zone. It was down by more than 10% since its all-time high. S&P 500, Dow and Dow Jones were respectively 5.7% and 3.9% lower than their record highs.

The S&P500 fell 1.84% while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.43%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 610.71, or 1.51%.