The 2010 U.S. market plunge that briefly erased nearly 1,000 Dow points was called the Flash Crash.
On May 6, 2010, major U.S. stock indexes dropped rapidly and then recovered much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly fell about 1,000 points, then rebounded. Some individual securities experienced extremely unusual prices during the disruption.
Investigations concluded that automated trading played an important role. A large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures interacted with high-frequency trading and rapidly changing liquidity. The resulting feedback helped accelerate the decline, although the episode involved multiple market participants and mechanisms.
The Flash Crash demonstrated that modern markets could move extraordinarily fast even without a conventional economic panic. Regulators later introduced or strengthened safeguards such as single-stock circuit breakers and clearer controls for algorithmic trading. It is distinct from Black Monday in 1987: both were sudden market collapses, but they occurred under different technological and financial conditions.