Nikkei 225 · August 16, 1971
The Nixon Shock
-7.23%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The Nixon shock
early in it · 1971-08-13 → 1971-08-24, -20.71% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 15 August 1971 — the US announced it would suspend converting dollars into gold
- On the next session, 16 August, the Nikkei 225 fell 7.23%
- The move meant a great deal to Japan: its postwar economy had grown through exports on a fixed rate of 360 yen to the dollar
- Remove that premise and the yen must appreciate, eroding exporters' price competitiveness
- The yen did appreciate substantially. Japanese companies had to shift the basis of their competitiveness from the exchange rate to quality and efficiency, and that took a long time
- Fell 20.71% from peak — one of the oldest events on this list
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.