The official U.S. name for the brief 2010 crash in which the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points was the Flash Crash.
On May 6, 2010, U.S. stock indexes suddenly fell and then recovered much of the loss within minutes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped about 1,000 points, or roughly 9%, before rebounding. Some individual securities briefly traded at extremely low prices.
Investigations found that automated trading played a major role. A large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures interacted with high-frequency trading and stressed market liquidity. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission concluded that the event was not caused by one simple error, but by interacting trading and market-structure conditions.
The episode demonstrated that modern markets could move extremely fast without a traditional news shock. Regulators and exchanges responded with measures such as single-stock circuit breakers and later market-wide safeguards. The Flash Crash is distinct from a conventional bear market because its most dramatic losses and recovery occurred over a very short period.