Vienna’s stock exchange collapse helped trigger the Panic of 1873 in the United States. The crash followed a speculative boom in Austria-Hungary, where rising railway and property shares attracted heavy investment.
On 9 May 1873, known as Black Friday in Vienna, prices collapsed. The shock spread through European financial markets and reached the United States, where the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company became a decisive event.
Jay Cooke had financed Union government bonds and invested heavily in railroads. When confidence weakened, the firm could not sell enough securities to meet obligations. Its failure helped prompt a suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Panic of 1873 was followed by a long depression often called the Long Depression. The crisis is sometimes described only as an American railroad collapse, but its initial major shock came from Vienna.