Nikkei 225 · December 20, 1973
Two sessions past the low
+4.42%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
The oil shock in Japan
midway through · 1973-01-24 → 1974-10-09, -37.40% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nikkei rose 4.42% to close at 4,165.23. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
- The low of this episode had come two sessions earlier, on 18 December
- That autumn oil producers raised prices sharply and cut exports, and Japan was shaken hardest
- A country that buys nearly all the oil it uses sees prices and corporate profits worsen together when input costs rise
- Wide daily ranges near a low are ordinary. Neither buyers nor sellers can settle on a price
- The episode fell 19.11% from the August high to the December low. The real bottom for this market came the following October
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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.