How many minutes did the 2010 Flash Crash take for the Dow to lose nearly 1,000 points?

The 2010 Flash Crash took about 36 minutes for the Dow to lose nearly 1,000 points.

On May 6, 2010, major U.S. stock indexes suddenly plunged during afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 1,000 points, representing about 9 percent, before recovering much of the loss. The movement was extraordinarily rapid compared with traditional market crashes.

Investigations found that automated trading played a central role. A large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures interacted with high-frequency trading and other automated strategies, producing a feedback loop of selling and liquidity withdrawal. The exact mechanics were complex, and the event exposed weaknesses in market safeguards.

The crash is sometimes described as a one-day 1,000-point collapse, but that wording can obscure its defining feature: the plunge and much of the recovery occurred within roughly half an hour. Regulators later introduced measures including circuit breakers and trading pauses.