Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, Crash of '29, or Black Tuesday,[1] was a major American stock market crash that occurred in late 1929. It began in September with a sharp decline in share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and ended in mid-November. The pivotal role of the 1920s' high-flying bull market and the subsequent catastrophic collapse of the NYSE in late 1929 is often highlighted in explanations of the causes of the worldwide Great Depression.
It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects.[2] The Great Crash is mostly associated with October 24, 1929, called Black Thursday, the day of the largest sell-off of shares in U.S. history,[3][4] and October 29, 1929, called Black Tuesday, when investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day.[5] The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.
The "Roaring Twenties", the decade following World War I that led to the crash,[6] was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americans migrated to the cities in vast numbers throughout the decade with hopes of finding a more prosperous life in the ever-growing expansion of America's industrial sector.[7]
Scholars believe that declines in the money supply caused by Federal Reserve decisions had a severely contractionary effect on output.[8] Despite the inherent risk of speculation, it was widely believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a small crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation.[9] Two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced that his company, the National City Bank, would provide $25 million in credit to stop the market's slide.[9] Mitchell's move brought a temporary halt to the financial crisis, and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent.[9] However, the American economy showed ominous signs of trouble.[9] Steel production declined, construction was sluggish, automobile sales went down, and consumers were building up large debts because of easy credit.[9]
Despite all the economic warning signs and the market breaks in March and May 1929, stocks resumed their advance in June, and the gains continued almost unabated until early September 1929 (the Dow Jones average gained more than 20% between June and September). The market had been on a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking at 381.17 on September 3, 1929.[9] Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau".[10] The optimism and the financial gains of the great bull market were shaken after a well-publicized September 8 prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that "a crash is coming, and it may be terrific".[11][12] The initial September decline was thus called the "Babson Break" in the press. That was the start of the Great Crash, but until the severe phase of the crash in October, many investors regarded the September "Babson Break" as a "healthy correction" and buying opportunity.[13]
On September 20, 1929, top British investor Clarence Hatry and many of his associates were jailed for fraud and forgery, leading to the suspension of his companies. This may have weakened the confidence of Americans in their own companies,[14] although it had minimal impact on the London Stock Exchange. In the days leading up to the crash, the market was severely unstable. Periods of selling and high volumes were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery.[citation needed]
Crash
Overall Price Index on Wall Street from just before the crash in 1929 to 1932 when the price bottomed out
Selling intensified in mid-October. On October 24, "Black Thursday", the market lost 11% of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading.[citation needed] The huge volume meant that the report of prices on the ticker tape in brokerage offices around the nation was hours late, and so investors had no idea what most stocks were trading for.[15] Several leading Wall Streetbankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor.[16] The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York.[17] They chose Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf.[citation needed]
With the bankers' financial resources behind him, Whitney placed a bid to purchase 25,000 shares of U.S. Steel at $205 per share, a price well above the current market.[18] As traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other "blue chip" stocks. The tactic was similar to one that had ended the Panic of 1907 and succeeded in halting the slide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered, closing down only 6.38 points (2.09%) for the day.[citation needed]
On October 28, "Black Monday",[19] more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 12.82%.[20]
On October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday" hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Around $14 billion of stock value was lost, wiping out thousands of investors. The panic selling reached its peak with some stocks having no buyers at any price.[21] The Dow lost an additional 30.57 points, or 11.73%, for a total drop of 68.90 points, or 23.05% in two days.[22][23][24][25]
On October 29, William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the market, but their efforts failed to stop the large decline in prices. The massive volume of stocks traded that day made the ticker continue to run until about 7:45p.m.[citation needed]
DowJonesIndustrialAverage on Black Monday and Black Tuesday[26]
Date
Change
% Change
Close
October 28, 1929
−38.33
−12.82
260.64
October 29, 1929
−30.57
−11.73
230.07
After a one-day recovery on October 30, when the Dow regained 28.40 points, or 12.34%, to close at 258.47, the market continued to fall, arriving at an interim bottom on November 13, 1929, with the Dow closing at 198.60. The market then recovered for several months, starting on November 14, with the Dow gaining 18.59 points to close at 217.28, and reaching a secondary closing peak (bear market rally) of 294.07 on April 17, 1930. The Dow then embarked on another, much longer, steady slide from April 1930 to July 8, 1932, when it closed at 41.22, its lowest level of the 20th century, concluding an 89.2% loss for the index in less than three years.[27][28]
Beginning on March 15, 1933, and continuing through the rest of the 1930s, the Dow began to slowly regain the ground it had lost. The largest percentage increases of the Dow Jones occurred during the early and mid-1930s. In late 1937, there was a sharp dip in the stock market, but prices held well above the 1932 lows. The Dow Jones did not return to its peak close of September 3, 1929, for 25 years, until November 23, 1954.[29][30][31]
Afterwards, stock markets around the world instituted measures to suspend trading in the event of rapid declines, claiming that the measures would prevent such panic sales. However, the one-day crash of Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6%, as well as Black Monday of March 16, 2020 (−12.9%), were worse in percentage terms than any single day of the 1929 crash (although the combined 25% decline of October 28–29, 1929, was larger than that of October 19, 1987, and remains the worst two-day decline as of October7,2024[update]).[34]
Analysis
The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s. During the latter half of the 1920s, steel production, building construction, retail turnover, automobiles registered, and even railway receipts advanced from record to record. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies showed an increase, in the first six months of 1929, of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Iron and steel led the way with doubled gains.[35] Such figures set up a crescendo of stock-exchange speculation that led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. Many people were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks that they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan,[36] more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the United States at the time.[37][38]
The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest on the hope that share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. Because of margin buying, investors stood to lose large sums of money if the market turned down or even if it failed to advance quickly enough. The average price to earnings ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929,[39] clearly above historical norms.[40] According to the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the exuberance also resulted in a large number of people placing their savings and money in leverage investment products like Goldman Sachs's "Blue Ridge trust" and "Shenandoah Trust", which crashed in 1929 as well, resulting in losses to banks of $475 billion in 2010 dollars ($663.68billion in 2023).[41]
Good harvests had built up a mass of 250 million bushels of wheat to be "carried over" when 1929 opened. By May there was also a winter wheat crop of 560 million bushels ready for harvest in the Mississippi Valley. The oversupply caused such a drop in wheat prices that the net incomes of farmers from wheat were threatened with extinction. Stock markets are always sensitive to the future state of commodity markets,[citation needed] and the slump in Wall Street that had been predicted for May by Sir George Paish arrived on time. In June 1929, the position was saved by a severe drought in the Dakotas and the Canadian West, as well as unfavorable seed times in Argentina and eastern Australia. The oversupply was now wanted to fill the gaps in the 1929 world wheat production. From 97¢ per bushel in May, the price of wheat rose to $1.49 in July. When it was seen that figure would make American farmers get more for their crop that year than in 1928, stocks went up again.[42]
In August, the wheat price fell when France and Italy were bragging about a magnificent harvest, and the situation in Australia improved. That sent a shiver through Wall Street and stock prices quickly dropped, but word of cheap stocks brought a fresh rush of "stags" (amateur speculators) and investors. Congress voted for a $100 million relief package for the farmers on the hope of stabilizing wheat prices, but by October, the price had fallen to $1.31 per bushel.[43]
Other important economic barometers were also slowing or even falling by mid-1929, including car sales, house sales, and steel production. The falling commodity and industrial production may have dented even American self-confidence, and the stock market peaked on September3 at 381.17 just after Labor Day, and it started to falter after Roger Babson issued his prescient "market crash" forecast. By the end of September, the market had dropped 10% from the peak (the "Babson Break"). Selling intensified in early and mid-October, with sharp down days punctuated by a few up days. Panic selling of massive proportion started the week of October21 and intensified and culminated on October24, October28, and especially October29 ("Black Tuesday").[44]
The president of the Chase National Bank, Albert H. Wiggin, said at the time:
We are reaping the natural fruit of the orgy of speculation in which millions of people have indulged. It was inevitable, because of the tremendous increase in the number of stockholders in recent years, that the number of sellers would be greater than ever when the boom ended and selling took the place of buying.[45][46]
Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression
Together, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression formed the largest financial crisis of the 20th century.[47] The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade.[48] The falls in share prices on October 24 and 29, 1929 were practically instantaneous in all financial markets, except Japan.[49]
The Wall Street Crash had a major impact on the U.S. and world economy, and it has been the source of intense academic historical, economic, and political debate from its aftermath until the present day. Some people believed that abuses by utility holding companies contributed to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.[50] Many people blamed the crash on commercial banks that were too eager to put deposits at risk on the stock market.[51]
In 1930, 1,352 banks held more than $853 million in deposits; in 1931, one year later, 2,294 banks failed with nearly $1.7 billion in deposits. Many businesses failed (28,285 failures and a daily rate of 133 in 1931).[citation needed]
The 1929 crash brought the Roaring Twenties to a halt.[52] As tentatively expressed by economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger, in 1929, there was no lender of last resort effectively present, which, if it had existed and been properly exercised, would have been key in shortening the business slowdown that normally follows financial crises.[49] The crash instigated widespread and long-lasting consequences for the United States. Historians still debate whether the 1929 crash sparked the Great Depression[53] or if it merely coincided with bursting a loose credit-inspired economic bubble. Only 16% of American households were invested in the stock market within the United States during the period leading up to this depression, suggesting that the crash carried somewhat less weight in causing it.[citation needed]
However, the psychological effects of the crash reverberated across the nation as businesses became aware of the difficulties in securing capital market investments for new projects and expansions. Business uncertainty naturally affects job security for employees, and as the American worker (the consumer) faced uncertainty with regard to income, naturally the propensity to consume declined. The decline in stock prices caused bankruptcies and severe macroeconomic difficulties, including contraction of credit, business closures, firing of workers, bank failures, decline of the money supply, and other economically depressing events.[54]
The resultant rise of mass unemployment is seen as a result of the crash, although the crash is by no means the sole event that contributed to the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and therefore is widely regarded as signaling the downward economic slide that initiated the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: It wiped out billions of dollars of wealth in one day, and this immediately depressed consumer buying.[53]
The failure set off a worldwide run on US gold deposits (i.e., the dollar) and forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates into the slump. Some 4,000 banks and other lenders ultimately failed. Also, the uptick rule,[55] which allowed short selling only when the last tick in a stock's price was positive, was implemented after the 1929 market crash to prevent short sellers from driving the price of a stock down in a bear raid.[56]
Europe
The stock market crash of October 1929 led directly to the Great Depression in Europe. When stocks plummeted on the New York Stock Exchange, the world noticed immediately. Although financial leaders in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, vastly underestimated the extent of the crisis that ensued, it soon became clear that the world's economies were more interconnected than ever. The effects of the disruption to the global system of financing, trade, and production and the subsequent meltdown of the American economy were soon felt throughout Europe.[57]
In 1930 and 1931, in particular, unemployed workers went on strike, demonstrated in public, and otherwise took direct action to call public attention to their plight. Within the UK, protests often focused on the so-called means test, which the government had instituted in 1931 to limit the amount of unemployment payments made to individuals and families. For working people, the means test seemed an intrusive and insensitive way to deal with the chronic and relentless deprivation caused by the economic crisis. The strikes were met forcefully, with police breaking up protests, arresting demonstrators, and charging them with crimes related to the violation of public order.[57]
Academic debate
There is a debate among economists and historians as to what role the crash played in subsequent economic, social, and political events. The Economist argued in a 1998 article that the Depression did not start with the stock market crash,[58] nor was it clear at the time of the crash that a depression was starting. They asked, "Can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?" They argued that there must be some setback, but there was not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it would be long or would necessarily produce a general industrial depression.[59]
However, The Economist also cautioned that some bank failures were also to be expected and some banks may not have had any reserves left for financing commercial and industrial enterprises. It concluded that the position of the banks was the key to the situation, but what was going to happen could not have been foreseen.[59]
The New York Stock Exchange is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States.
A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks, which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include securities listed on a public stock exchange as well as stock that is only traded privately, such as shares of private companies that are sold to investors through equity crowdfunding platforms. Investments are usually made with an investment strategy in mind.
A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often follow speculation and economic bubbles.
A market trend is a perceived tendency of the financial markets to move in a particular direction over time. Analysts classify these trends as secular for long time-frames, primary for medium time-frames, and secondary for short time-frames. Traders attempt to identify market trends using technical analysis, a framework which characterizes market trends as predictable price tendencies within the market when price reaches support and resistance levels, varying over time.
Black Monday was the global, severe and largely unexpected stock market crash on Monday, October 19, 1987. Worldwide losses were estimated at US$1.71 trillion. The severity of the crash sparked fears of extended economic instability or even a reprise of the Great Depression.
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth but do not necessarily result in significant changes in the real economy.
The Kennedy Slide of 1962, also known as the Flash Crash of 1962, is the term given to the stock market decline from December 1961 to June 1962 during the Presidential term of John F. Kennedy. After the market experienced decades of growth since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the stock market peaked during the end of 1961 and plummeted during the first half of 1962. During this period, the S&P 500 declined 22.5%, and the stock market did not experience a stable recovery until after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5.7%, down 34.95, the second-largest point decline then on record.
A trading curb is a financial regulatory instrument that is in place to prevent stock market crashes from occurring, and is implemented by the relevant stock exchange organization. Since their inception, circuit breakers have been modified to prevent both speculative gains and dramatic losses within a small time frame. When triggered, circuit breakers either stop trading for a small amount of time or close trading early in order to allow accurate information to flow among market makers and for institutional traders to assess their positions and make rational decisions.
The initial economic collapse which resulted in the Great Depression can be divided into two parts: 1929 to mid-1931, and then mid-1931 to 1933. The initial decline lasted from mid-1929 to mid-1931. During this time, most people believed that the decline was merely a bad recession, worse than the recessions that occurred in 1923 and 1927, but not as bad as the Depression of 1920-21. Economic forecasters throughout 1930 optimistically predicted an economic rebound come 1931, and felt vindicated by a stock market rally in the spring of 1930.
The US bear market of 2007–2009 was a 17-month bear market that lasted from October 9, 2007 to March 9, 2009, during the financial crisis of 2007–2009. The S&P 500 lost approximately 50% of its value, but the duration of this bear market was just below average.
Panic selling is a large-scale selling of an investment that causes a sharp decline in prices. Specifically, an investor wants to sell an investment with little regard to the price obtained. The sale is problematic because the investor is reacting to emotion and fear, rather than evaluating the fundamentals.
The August 2011 stock markets fall was the sharp drop in stock prices in August 2011 in stock exchanges across the United States, Middle East, Europe and Asia. This was due to fears of contagion of the European sovereign debt crisis to Spain and Italy, as well as concerns over France's current AAA rating, concerns over the slow economic growth of the United States and its credit rating being downgraded. Severe volatility of stock market indexes continued for the rest of the year.
The following events occurred in October 1929:
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↑ Bone, James. "The beginner's guide to stock markets". The Times. London. Archived from the original on May 25, 2010. Retrieved January 29, 2012. The most savage bear market of all time was the Wall Street Crash of 1929–1932, in which share prices fell by 89 percent.
↑ "Babson Predicts Crash in Stocks Sooner or Later". The Owensboro Messenger (Owensboro, Kentucky). September 8, 1929. p. 2. "I repeat what I said at this time last year, and the year before, that sooner or later a crash is coming which will take the leading stocks and cause a decline of from sixty to eighty points in the Dow-Jones Barometer. Fair weather cannot always continue. The economic cycle is in progress today, as it was in the past. The Federal Reserve System has put the banks in a strong position, but it has not changed human nature. More people are borrowing and speculating today than ever in our history. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt and reef their sails. This does not mean selling all you have but it does mean paying up your loans and avoiding margin speculation."
↑ Salsman, Richard M. "The Cause and Consequences of the Great Depression, Part 1: What Made the Roaring '20s Roar", The Intellectual Activist, ISSN0730-2355, June 2004, p. 16.
↑ According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Economic Data website, based on a monthly time series 1929 September – 1932 June, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 87.1% while the Cowles Commission and S&P's all stock index lost 85.0%: "Dow-Jones Industrial Stock Price Index for United States". Federal Reserve Economic Data. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. May 1933.
↑ Lambert, Richard (July 19, 2008). "Crashes, Bangs & Wallops". Financial Times. Archived from the original on October 3, 2008. Retrieved September 30, 2008. At the turn of the 20th-century stock market speculation was restricted to professionals, but the 1920s saw millions of 'ordinary Americans' investing in the New York Stock Exchange. By August 1929, brokers had lent small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying on margin – more than $8.5bn was out on loan.
Axon, Gordon V. (1974). The Stock Market Crash of 1929. London: Mason & Lipscomb Publishers Inc. [ISBNmissing]
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Brooks, John (1969). Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN0393013758
Klein, Maury (2001). Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN0195135164
Klingaman, William K. (1989). 1929: The Year of the Great Crash. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN0060160810
Leone, Bruno (1994). The Great Depression: Opposing Viewpoints, 14–25. San Diego, California: Bender, David L. [ISBNmissing]
Pendergast, Tom ( 2003). American Decades: 1920–1929. Farmington Hills, Michigan: UXL American Decades Publishing [ISBNmissing]
Shachtman, Tom (1979). The Day America Crashed: A Narrative Account of the Great Stock Market Crash of October 24, 1929. New York: G.P. Putnam. ISBN0399116133.
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