Black Thursday: Wall Street Crash Begins in 1929
Panic hit the New York Stock Exchange on October 24, 1929, when a record 12.9 million shares changed hands in frenzied selling. Ticker machines ran hours behind actual trades, amplifying the terror as investors couldn't tell how much they'd lost. A group of leading bankers, including J.P. Morgan's Thomas Lamont, pooled resources to buy stocks and stabilize prices, briefly halting the decline. But it was a finger in a dam. The following Monday and Tuesday brought worse crashes, wiping out $30 billion in market value in two days. Margin buyers who had borrowed heavily were wiped out first, then the banks that had lent to them. The crash didn't cause the Great Depression by itself, but it destroyed consumer confidence and triggered a cascade of bank failures that contracted the money supply for three years.
October 24, 1929
97 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on October 24
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