Nikkei 225 · October 28, 1974
Autumn of the year oil changed everything
-4.94%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Japan's recovery from the oil shock
early in it · 1974-10-09 → 1978-03-28, +59.77% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- The Nikkei fell 4.94% to close at 3,403.61. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
- The previous autumn, oil producers had raised prices sharply and cut exports, and Japan was hit hardest
- Japan buys essentially all the oil it uses. When input costs rise, prices and corporate profits worsen together
- 1974 was the first year since the war that the economy shrank. Inflation ran in double digits
- In a year like that, big moves come without particular news — the ground for setting prices at all is unstable
- The low of this episode had already passed, on 9 October. Days like this kept coming after the bottom
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.