In what year did the U.S. stock market crash, beginning the Great Depression? The crash began in 1929, during a dramatic collapse on the New York Stock Exchange.
The most famous dates were October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday, and October 29, known as Black Tuesday. On Black Tuesday, investors traded roughly 16.4 million shares as panic selling drove prices sharply lower. The crash followed years of economic expansion and heavy stock-market speculation during the 1920s.
The 1929 crash did not single-handedly cause every aspect of the Great Depression. Bank failures, falling consumer demand, debt, industrial contraction, and policy decisions deepened and prolonged the crisis. The downturn spread internationally and became the most severe economic depression of the modern era. The year 1933 is sometimes confused with the crash because it marked a later stage of the Depression and the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.