The 2010 U.S. stock-market crash that briefly erased nearly $1 trillion was called the Flash Crash.
On May 6, 2010, major U.S. stock indexes dropped rapidly before recovering much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 1,000 points, its largest intraday point decline at that time. Many individual securities also experienced extreme, short-lived price movements.
Investigations found that automated trading and unusual market conditions played important roles. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission concluded that a large sell order in the E-mini S&P 500 futures market helped create pressure that spread through interconnected trading systems.
The event showed that modern markets could move dramatically faster than human traders could react. It led to safeguards including circuit breakers and controls designed to pause trading during sudden, disorderly price movements. It was a brief market disruption, not a multiyear collapse like the Great Depression crash.