The 2010 flash crash occurred on May 6, 2010, when U.S. stock indexes plunged and rapidly recovered.
During the afternoon session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points, losing about 9% within minutes before recovering much of the fall. Some individual securities briefly traded at extraordinarily low prices, creating a chaotic appearance unlike a conventional, steadily developing bear market.
Investigations found that automated trading, market fragmentation, and a large sell order interacted in ways that accelerated the decline. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission later described how algorithmic activity and liquidity conditions contributed to the event.
The crash led to reforms, including single-stock circuit breakers and broader market safeguards. It is sometimes confused with Black Monday in 1987, but the two events were separated by more than two decades. The 2010 episode was unusually fast: the sharp fall and partial recovery happened during the same trading session.