The Flash Crash was the 2010 U.S. market event that briefly erased nearly 1,000 Dow points in minutes.
On May 6, 2010, major U.S. stock indexes plunged rapidly and then recovered much of the decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 1,000 points, close to 9 percent, during the session. Some individual securities traded at bizarrely low or high prices before normal trading returned.
Investigations linked the episode to a combination of existing market stress, high-frequency trading, fragmented electronic markets, and a large automated sell order. A later U.S. investigation concluded that trader Navinder Singh Sarao used spoofing-related orders that contributed to the conditions, though no single factor explains every movement.
The event differed from a conventional crash because the fall and partial rebound happened extremely quickly. Regulators responded with measures including trading pauses and clearer controls for extreme price movements.