WhyItDropped

Nikkei 225 · August 19, 2011

The summer the yen hit a record

-2.51%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Europe again, and a record yen

early in it · 2011-07-08 → 2011-11-25, -19.51% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The Nikkei 225 fell 2.51% on the day
  • Early that month a rating agency had cut the US government's grade for the first time ever, while Italian and Spanish yields were jumping in Europe
  • Money with nowhere to go crowded into the yen, which strengthened to a record
  • Japan's production and exports had already been broken by the March earthquake. The exchange rate landed on top of that
  • The structure in which a stricken country's currency strengthens hit Japan twice in this period
  • The authorities intervened several times that year without turning the tide for long

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.