The 2010 market event that lasted about 36 minutes was the Flash Crash.
On May 6, 2010, major U.S. stock indexes plunged and then recovered much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly fell by nearly 1,000 points, an unusually rapid move that disrupted confidence in electronic markets.
Investigations found that automated trading and a large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures interacted with rapidly changing liquidity. The exact chain was complex, but the event showed how algorithms could amplify a sudden imbalance between buyers and sellers.
The Flash Crash was not the same as a conventional bear market. Prices recovered quickly, whereas crashes such as 1929 or 2008 were part of prolonged declines. U.S. exchanges later strengthened safeguards, including rules for clearly erroneous trades and market-wide pauses.