The 2010 Flash Crash erased and then recovered much of its U.S. stock-market decline in about 36 minutes.
On May 6, 2010, major U.S. equity indexes plunged rapidly during afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 1,000 points at its low, although it recovered much of the fall before the session ended. Many individual securities also experienced extreme, short-lived price movements.
Investigations linked the event to interactions among high-frequency trading, automated orders, and a large sell order. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission later described a complex chain of market activity rather than a single simple cause.
The episode led to new safeguards, including circuit breakers designed to pause trading during unusually rapid price movements. It showed how electronic markets could amplify stress within minutes.