Black Tuesday crashed Wall Street into the Great Depression
On this day · 29 October 1929
On October 29, 1929, a record 16 million shares changed hands as Wall Street collapsed, wiping out fortunes and opening the Great Depression.
On 29 October 1929 — Black Tuesday — the New York Stock Exchange came apart. Panicked investors dumped a then-record 16 million shares in a single session, and the floor’s ticker machines fell hours behind, unable to keep pace with the selling.
By the closing bell, roughly $14 billion in stock value had evaporated, wiping out countless ordinary savers who had borrowed money to buy in during the boom years.
The day capped a brutal stretch. From Black Thursday on October 24 through Black Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed about a quarter of its value, and the slide was far from over.
Stocks would not bottom out until 1932, by which point the market had lost nearly 90% of its peak worth.
Black Tuesday did not single-handedly cause the Great Depression — banking failures and bad policy did much of that — but it remains its unforgettable opening scene, the moment the Roaring Twenties stopped roaring.
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