WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · November 30, 1973

A big up-day in the middle of the oil shock

+5.22%

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 5.22% to close at 4,641.84. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
  • That October, war in the Middle East led oil producers to raise prices sharply and cut exports
  • Japan buys nearly all the oil it uses, so the blow landed hardest there — it even set off panic buying of household goods
  • Wide swings in both directions mean the market cannot settle on a view. This rise is one side of that
  • The episode fell 21.16% from the August high to the December low, and this day sits inside it
  • The low came almost three weeks later, on 18 December

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.