WhyItDropped

Nasdaq · April 15, 2013

The day gold collapsed

-2.38%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The climb back to the level of 2000

early in it · 2012-11-15 → 2015-04-23, +78.22% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nasdaq fell 2.38% on the day
  • Gold collapsed over two sessions, its largest fall in thirty years
  • Gold is held as protection against rising prices. Its collapse meant the market was betting that prices would not rise
  • Chinese growth came in below expectations the same day. As the largest user of raw materials, that pulled commodities down with it
  • The Boston Marathon bombing occurred that afternoon and deepened the loss into the close
  • The fall was brief, though. The Nasdaq recovered within weeks and rose through the rest of the year

Sources

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.