The 2010 Flash Crash occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones briefly lost nearly 1,000 points.
During that afternoon, major United States stock indexes dropped rapidly before recovering much of the decline. The Dow’s intraday fall was about 1,000 points, or roughly 9%, and many individual securities briefly traded at extraordinarily low or high prices.
Investigations found that automated trading, market conditions, and a large sell order in E-mini S&P 500 futures interacted in a way that intensified the decline. The event showed how electronic markets could move at extreme speed and how liquidity might disappear across several trading venues.
The crash led regulators and exchanges to introduce or strengthen safeguards, including single-stock trading pauses and market-wide circuit breakers. In 2015, United States authorities charged Navinder Singh Sarao with contributing to the event through spoofing, although the broader mechanics involved many interacting market participants and systems.