The brief U.S. stock-market plunge on May 6, 2010, when the Dow dropped about 1,000 points, was called the Flash Crash.
During the afternoon of May 6, major U.S. equity indexes fell rapidly and then recovered much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced an intraday decline of about 1,000 points, one of its largest point drops at that time. Individual securities briefly traded at extremely unusual prices.
Investigations by U.S. regulators linked the event to interactions among automated trading, high-frequency trading, liquidity conditions, and a large sell order. A trader later admitted manipulating markets through spoofing, but the episode was not reduced to a simple single-cause explanation in official accounts.
The Flash Crash differed from a prolonged bear market: its defining feature was speed and partial reversal on the same day. New safeguards, including circuit breakers and trading pauses, were introduced or strengthened afterward to reduce the risk of similar disorder.