The extreme United States stock-market plunge on May 6, 2010, is commonly called the Flash Crash.
During the afternoon, major indexes and thousands of individual securities dropped rapidly before recovering much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly fell by nearly 1,000 points, then rebounded. Some trades occurred at extremely unusual prices before exchanges canceled many of them.
Investigations concluded that automated trading and market structure played central roles. A large sell order interacted with high-frequency trading and reduced market liquidity, allowing prices to move violently. The event showed how electronic markets could accelerate both selling and recovery.
The Flash Crash was not a conventional multi-year bear market like the 1929 or 2008 crises. It was a sudden disruption lasting minutes, although it prompted regulatory changes. U.S. markets later introduced mechanisms such as single-stock circuit breakers and broader trading pauses.