The 2010 Flash Crash occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly lost about 1,000 points within minutes.
The rapid fall affected U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds, futures, and options. The Dow declined roughly 9% from its intraday level before recovering much of the loss. Some securities traded at extremely unusual prices, including temporary transactions at fractions of a cent or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Investigations by U.S. regulators concluded that a large automated sell order in the E-mini S&P 500 futures market interacted with high-frequency trading and liquidity conditions. The event showed how quickly electronic markets could transmit stress across venues. It was not the same as the 1987 Black Monday crash: the 2010 move was exceptionally fast and largely reversed the same day. Regulators later introduced measures including trading pauses and coordination across markets to reduce the risk of similar disorder.