The 2010 Flash Crash was the U.S. market event in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly plunged nearly 1,000 points within minutes.
On May 6, 2010, U.S. stock indexes fell rapidly during afternoon trading before recovering much of the loss. The Dow’s intraday decline was about 1,000 points, roughly 9 percent, although the index finished down less than that. Prices in some individual securities moved to extremely low or high levels before trading normalized.
Investigations concluded that automated high-frequency trading and a large sell order contributed to the disorderly conditions. The event also exposed weaknesses in market structure, including how liquidity could disappear when computerized systems reacted simultaneously.
The Flash Crash was not the same as the 1987 crash or the 2008 global financial crisis. It was exceptionally rapid and largely reversed within the same trading session. Regulators later introduced measures such as trading pauses and circuit breakers to reduce the risk of similar extreme moves.