The 2010 Flash Crash briefly sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 1,000 points.
On May 6, 2010, U.S. equity markets experienced a sudden plunge and partial rebound within minutes. The Dow’s intraday decline was about 1,000 points, then the index recovered much of the loss before the session ended. Many individual securities also recorded unusually extreme prices.
Investigations linked the event to a combination of market stress, high-frequency trading, automated orders, and a large sell order. Regulators later concluded that trading interactions and liquidity withdrawal helped magnify the move. The event showed how quickly electronic markets could destabilize.
The Flash Crash was not a conventional multi-year bear market. It was a rapid market dislocation, and some trades executed at clearly anomalous prices were later canceled. Its aftermath influenced circuit breakers, trading controls, and market-surveillance systems in the United States.