Weirdest Wall Street Days: The 7 Biggest Stock Market Crashes in History

Even if you don’t have a lot invested in the stock market, the way the market rises and falls affects everyone. That means when the market is acting weird, we should all start paying attention. 

It’s been chaotic this year. Five of the biggest one-day point drops in the Dow’s history happened in 2018. Even with all those point drops, we still haven’t even come close to some of the worst crashes in history. 

Curious? Read on to discover the seven biggest stock market crashes that changed the landscape of American investing. 

7. Post World War II

After the soldiers came home from the second World War, we didn’t only see a baby boom in the next year. Transitioning from war to peacetime doesn’t come without its speed bumps. 1946 proved that in a pretty uncomfortable way. 

With half of our young people back in the country and rations lifted, there was a huge spike in demand. People wanted to buy the things they couldn’t get during the war.

However, this led to a period of inflation. This pushed investors to change the stock market regulations in January of 1946. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but to comply with the new regulations, many stockholders had to sell off their shares. 

From June to November of 1946, the market fell 21.4 percentage points. It wouldn’t stabilize again until 1950. 

6. The Burst of the Dot Com Bubble

It was exciting to see the Internet’s popularity grow in the nineties, especially if you were an investor. Investors were so happy about it, in fact, that they thought any company involved with software and the internet was going to make them a ton of money. 

The internet boom caused a huge rise in speculation from 1997 to 2000. Investors were more than willing to throw money at any tech company that showed a hint of promise…and those that didn’t. 

Of course, consequences followed. From 2000 to 2002, the dot-com bubble started to pop as internet companies went bankrupt. The market declined almost 45% in those two years. 

5. Panic of 1896

A 45% decline in two years pales in comparison to how much the market dropped in one day after the Panic of 1896. Let’s take it way back to see what caused the market to drop over a century ago. 

Back then, people weren’t focused on the possibilities of the Internet. Instead, they were more concerned about the simple things — the costs of silver and gold. 

Silver’s role in the American economy had diminished, increasing the reliance on gold. When both the gold and silver reserves dropped, though, it sparked years of market volatility. The worst moment came in late 1899 when the market dropped almost twelve percentage points in only one day.  

The unemployment rate rose, and it got so bad at one point that there was a string of suicides among high-profile bankers. 

4. Black Tuesday

The crash of 1929, the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression, was so bad that it’s on this list twice. The first day of the crash that we’ll touch on was the day that was eventually dubbed Black Tuesday. 

While the crash had started five days before, on October 29, 1929, the market dipped even further. The market dipped 11.73% in a day, causing even more panic than there already was. This was the last day of the stock market crash and one of the worst — investors lost $14 billion in shares that day. Today, that would be like a loss of $199 billion. 

3. Black Monday

No, this isn’t a day for a lot of post-Thanksgiving sales. Black Monday was one of the worst days in Dow Jones history.

It was already an uncertain time in the country. There were tensions in the Middle East, inflation was becoming unsustainable, and our exports suffered. No one knows the exact cause of the October 1987 crash, but the effects are legendary. 

On Monday, October 19, the Dow lost 23% of its value in a day, sending investors into a tailspin. People who were well-versed in options trading had a bit of a cushion, but everyone else felt the consequences. 

2. Great Recession 

The recession that began in 2008 is still recent enough for us to feel the effects today, even though our economy has rebounded. It started on September 15 of 2008, when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. 

The markets were chaotic after that. On September 15 alone, the Dow dropped more than 500 points. Two days later, money market funds lost $144 billion dollars as companies scrambled to move their money to more secure locations. 

The stock market seemed to stabilize when investors learned that there was a bailout bill making its way through Congress, but politicians ended up rejecting it. On September 29, 2008 — the 2008 Black Monday — the Dow fell 777.68 points and the U.S. lost $1.2 trillion in market value. 

There were hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and the effects reverberated across the globe. 

1. Great Crash of 1929

Of course, nothing compares to the Great Crash of 1929, which kicked off the worst economic depression in American history. Although Black Tuesday is the day that started the Great Depression, the percentage loss was even worse the day before. 

The stocks began to tumble on October 24, 1929, which became known as Black Thursday. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) People could tell that investors and bankers were losing faith in the market, but it still wasn’t a source of too much panic yet. The following Monday, though, stocks declined 13%. That triggered the panic of Black Tuesday when stocks fell another 12%. 

When it was all said and done, investors had lost ten times more than the entire 1929 federal budget. Over the course of three years, the stock market lost 83% of its value.

The country had never seen anything like it — and hopefully, we never will again. 

Learn More Weird Facts Like the Biggest Stock Market Crashes

Believe it or not, the biggest stock market crashes in U.S. history aren’t the weirdest facts out there. There’s a ton of weird information out there that’s surprising to even the most well-read people. 

Want to learn even more weird facts? Check out some of the most popular weirdness we have to offer.

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