Monday, August 16th, 1971

A Kodachrome street photograph of a Manhattan sidewalk on a hot morning in August 1971: commuters in suits and summer dresses stream past yellow Checker cabs. Among them a clown in a powder-blue costume with a white ruffled collar, a towering silver-white wig of curls, butter-yellow greasepaint and cerulean winged eyes stands still, face tilted up, one white-gloved hand just opened — a single gold balloon rising above the crowd, its string still curling. Beside her a man in a pinstripe suit checks his watch. Nobody looks up.

Cut loose

S&P 500 98.76 · +3.07 · +3.21%

Sunday night a president untied the dollar from gold; Monday the market threw a party for the end of its own anchor. The tether is off and the first sensation is lift.

The photograph Floats Lets Go

The day's protagonist

The dollar — no symbol.

Move: untied from gold after thirty-seven years at $35 an ounce

At nine o'clock Sunday night, pre-empting Bonanza, Richard Nixon announced three measures in sixteen minutes: a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices, a ten percent surcharge on imports, and the suspension of the dollar's convertibility into gold — the promise that had anchored the world's money since 1944. It was announced as temporary. It never came back. Monday morning the market cheered the loudest it ever had: the biggest Dow gain in history to that date, on the heaviest volume the exchange had ever seen. From that morning on, every dollar has been backed by exactly what the tape decided it could live with: trust.

The deeper account

Bretton Woods, 1944: the world's currencies pegged to the dollar, the dollar pegged to gold at $35 an ounce. By 1971 the promise exceeded the gold: dollars abroad far outnumbered the metal in Fort Knox, and the run had quietly begun.

The announcement was staged for maximum Sunday-night reach — the address famously pre-empted Bonanza. The freeze read as decisive; the window's closing read, to most viewers, as a technicality.

The photograph of this day is Floats', not his: the hand just opened, the gold balloon at the instant it became unreachable — not the reaching, and not the gone. The crowd streamed past on its way to the loudest party the tape had ever thrown, and nobody looked up.

Within two years every major currency floated. Gold, freed from thirty-five dollars, never looked back. The 'Nixon Shock' became the founding condition of every page in this encyclopedia that follows it.

The record gain is kept in the ledger — the odd ceremony of a market celebrating the end of its own anchor. What was actually recorded that Monday took decades to read.

The artifact

THE GOLD WINDOW · MONDAY, AUG 16 WINDOW CLOSED temporarily. rate posted at closing: $35 an ounce. held thirty-seven years. SUSPENDED what the market did about it: dow +32.93 · its largest gain on record volume 31.73M shares — the heaviest ever. TELLER'S HAND announced as temporary. the sign never came down. EVERY DOLLAR SINCE: BACKED BY TRUST · GOLD, FREED, NEVER LOOKED BACK
The window card — hung Sunday night, between two paragraphs of a televised address

The promise had anchored the world's money since 1944: thirty-five dollars, an ounce of gold, on demand. Sunday night at nine — pre-empting Bonanza — the window closed in sixteen minutes of television, announced as temporary alongside a wage freeze and an import surcharge. Monday the market threw a party for the end of its own anchor: the biggest Dow gain to that date on the heaviest volume the Exchange had ever seen. The card is still up.

Read the window card

Printed text is shown plain; the teller's entries are shown in script.

THE GOLD WINDOW · MONDAY, AUG 16 · WINDOW CLOSED — temporarily.

  • rate posted at closing: $35 an ounce. held thirty-seven years. · SUSPENDED
  • what the market did about it: dow +32.93 · its largest gain on record · volume 31.73M shares — the heaviest ever.
  • TELLER'S HAND: announced as temporary. the sign never came down.
  • EVERY DOLLAR SINCE: BACKED BY TRUST · GOLD, FREED, NEVER LOOKED BACK

At nine o'clock on Sunday night, August 15, 1971, President Nixon suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold — the Bretton Woods promise held since 1944 at $35 an ounce — alongside a ninety-day wage and price freeze and a ten percent import surcharge. On Monday the S&P 500 rose 3.21 percent to 98.76 and the Dow gained 32.93 points, its largest one-day gain to that date, on 31.73 million shares, the heaviest volume in Exchange history. The suspension was announced as temporary; it never came back.

The ledger — what actually happened

Measure Close Change Marginalia
S&P 500 98.76 +3.07 · +3.21% from 95.69; touched 100.96 during the session
Dow Jones 888.95 +32.93 · +3.85% the largest one-day gain to that date
NYSE volume 31.73M shares the heaviest day in exchange history to that date
The gold window closed convertibility suspended after 37 years at $35 an ounce — announced as temporary, never reopened
The freeze 90 days wages, prices and rents — plus a 10% surcharge on imports

Sources

  1. Yahoo Finance ^GSPC daily series (OHLC and volume, week of 1971-08-16), pulled 2026-08-15
  2. Begin To Invest — This Day in Stock Market History: August 16 — https://www.begintoinvest.com/august-16/
  3. The 92ers — August 15, 1971: Nixon (temporarily) Closes the Gold Window — https://www.the92ers.com/blog/august-15-1971-nixon-temporarily-closes-gold-window-opens-door-inflationary-chaos-and-wealth-0
  4. Verified Investing — Nixon: Breaking the Gold Standard and Reshaping 1970s Markets — https://verifiedinvesting.com/blogs/education/richard-nixon-breaking-the-gold-standard-and-reshaping-1970s-markets
  5. Goldco — Closing the Gold Window: What Effect Did It Have on Gold? — https://goldco.com/closing-the-gold-window-what-effect-did-it-have-on-gold/