S&P 500 · August 16, 1971
The Monday after the Nixon shock
+3.21%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- On 16 August 1971 the S&P 500 rose 3.21%
- The Sunday evening before, the US president had announced that dollars would no longer be exchangeable for gold
- Announced alongside it: a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices, and an extra tariff on imports
- It read as a promise to stop inflation, and the import charge looked good for US manufacturers. So stocks rose
- The Dow posted its largest point gain to that date
- The lasting effect was the end of fixed exchange rates. Today's system, where currencies are priced by the market, starts here
- For stocks it did not last. The index fell 13.94% from its peak in this stretch
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.