The final major selling day of the 1929 U.S. stock-market crash, October 29, was called Black Tuesday. It followed Black Thursday and Black Monday, creating a sequence of panic-filled sessions on the New York Stock Exchange.
On Black Tuesday, approximately 16 million shares changed hands, setting a trading-volume record that stood for decades. Prices fell as investors rushed to sell, and many purchases made on margin became impossible to support. The selling intensified fears that the speculative boom had ended permanently.
Black Tuesday is often described as the day the stock market crashed, but the broader decline continued for years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average did not reach its low until July 1932, when it was about 89 percent below its September 1929 peak.
The crash contributed to the Great Depression, but historians do not treat it as the sole cause. Banking failures, monetary contraction, debt burdens, and falling international trade were also important.