The nickname for October 24, 1929, when panic selling intensified in New York, is Black Thursday. It was the first major day of the Wall Street Crash’s widely remembered final week.
Trading volume surged as investors tried to sell shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened sharply lower, but a group of leading bankers gathered at the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co. and reportedly bought shares to support prices. The market recovered much of its intraday loss before closing.
The temporary rebound did not restore confidence. Selling resumed on October 28, known as Black Monday, and intensified again on October 29, known as Black Tuesday. Those later sessions produced larger percentage losses and are often more strongly associated with the crash.
Black Thursday is sometimes confused with Black Tuesday because all three names refer to the same October 1929 collapse. The crash followed years of speculative investment and margin buying, but the subsequent Great Depression also reflected banking, monetary, production, and international economic problems.