On Black Thursday in 1929, Richard Whitney bid for U.S. Steel to calm the market.
On October 24, 1929, frantic selling overwhelmed the New York Stock Exchange. Leading bankers met and selected Whitney, then the Exchange’s vice president, to represent their pooled financial resources on the trading floor. His public buying was intended to signal that major financiers still had confidence in leading companies.
Whitney went to the U.S. Steel trading post and bid for 25,000 shares at $205 each, a price above the prevailing market. He then placed similar bids for other prominent stocks. The dramatic display helped halt the day’s slide, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished far above its intraday low.
The intervention was temporary, not a rescue of the entire market. Selling resumed on Black Monday and Black Tuesday, October 28 and 29. Whitney later became president of the NYSE but was eventually convicted of embezzlement, a later scandal unrelated to the 1929 bid itself.