S&P 500 · August 5, 2024
The yen unwind reaches New York
-3.00%
single-day change vs previous close
What happened that day?
- On 5 August 2024 the S&P 500 fell 3%
- A week earlier the Bank of Japan had raised rates, from a level that had sat near zero for a very long time
- A large amount of money had been borrowed in cheap yen and put into assets elsewhere. When the yen gets dearer, that trade turns into a loss
- Then the July US payrolls report came in worse than expected, adding a recession worry on top
- To repay borrowed money you have to sell what you bought. That selling started in Japan and spread outward
- The Nikkei fell by a double-digit percentage that day, a record one-day drop
- The US recovered quickly — 8.49% down from the peak, made back within weeks
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.