The 2010 Flash Crash lasted about 36 minutes from the rapid plunge to much of the market's recovery.
On May 6, 2010, U.S. equity markets fell sharply in a matter of minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points, or about 9%, before recovering a large portion of the loss by the end of the session.
Investigations attributed the event to an interaction between high-frequency trading, market liquidity, and a large automated sale of futures contracts. Some securities briefly traded at absurd prices, while others were executed far away from their prevailing values.
The event was not a conventional, multi-day economic crash. It exposed how electronic markets could amplify a trading imbalance. Regulators introduced or strengthened safeguards, including single-stock circuit breakers and mechanisms for reviewing clearly erroneous trades.