What date is associated with the 2010 Flash Crash in U.S. financial markets?

The 2010 Flash Crash occurred on May 6, 2010, in U.S. financial markets.

During the afternoon of May 6, major U.S. stock indexes dropped rapidly and then recovered much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 1,000 points, roughly 9%, before rebounding. Some individual securities briefly traded at extraordinarily low or high prices.

Investigations linked the episode to interactions among high-frequency trading, automated selling, market liquidity, and a large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures. The event showed how modern electronic markets could move at exceptional speed when trading systems reacted to one another.

The Flash Crash was not the same kind of prolonged collapse as the 1929 crash or the 2008 crisis. It was a short-lived market dislocation, although it led regulators and exchanges to review circuit breakers, data handling, and safeguards against extreme price movements.