What Happens When A Stock Market Crashes?
July 10, 2010 by Mallory Megan
Filed under Stock Market
A stock market crash can be loosely defined up as a circumstance where share prices of stock listed on the stock exchanges drop drastically. Even though there are a number of economic factors that will cause a stock market crash, a reason for stock market crashes is also the investing public’s loss of confidence in the economy and mass panic.
Many times, the effects of stock market crashes can be awful for a country’s economy. There have been infamous stock market crashes that resulted in the loss of billions of dollars, and as more and more people become involved in the stock market, crashes have touched more lives recently.
One of the most infamous stock market crashes began on October 24, 1929 and would be come to be known as Black Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial lost fifty percent during this stock market crash, setting off the start of the Great Depression. Another famous crash occurred on October 19, 1987, which also known as Black Monday. The crash started in Hong Kong but rapidly caught fire around the world.
By the time October was over, stock markets in Hong Kong had fallen 45.5%, the United States had fallen 22.68%, and Australia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Canada suffered intensely in addition. In stock market history, this marked the biggest one day percentage decline – the Dow Jones fell by 22.6% in one day.
Nothing could seem to explain the crash in 1987. The main events and news at the time could not predict the disaster and any obvious reasons for the collapse could not be identified. This crash created many questions about the theories and assumptions of modern economics. After the crash, computer systems were upgraded in the stock exchanges to handle larger trading volumes more efficiently. The New York Stock Exchange also introduced the concept of a circuit breaker, which halts trading if the Dow declines a prescribed number of points for a prescribed amount of time.
Mallory Megan works for Rapid Recovery Solution and writes articles on medical collection agencies. This article, What Happens When A Stock Market Crashes? is released under a creative commons attribution licence.
