The 2010 Flash Crash occurred on May 6, 2010, when U.S. markets plunged dramatically before recovering much of the loss.
During the afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points, then recovered a large portion of the decline within minutes. Many individual securities experienced extreme, short-lived price movements, including trades at prices far removed from their surrounding quotations.
Investigations found that automated trading played a major role in the event. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission concluded that a large sell order in the E-mini S&P 500 futures market interacted with high-frequency trading and market conditions to intensify the fall.
The event led regulators and exchanges to review market structure and introduce safeguards, including circuit breakers and clearer procedures for handling clearly erroneous trades. It was not the same kind of prolonged economic collapse as 1929 or 2008.