1929 Stock Market Crash
Before the 1929 crash, throughout the 1920s a long "bull market" took place in stock markets, where prices increased to peaks never seen before. In fact, from 1920 to 1929 stocks more than quadrupled in value. The first signs of an upcoming crash came on Black Thursday, October 24th, 1929, when the DJIA closed down 20%. However, the stock market ended up slightly on Friday, October 25th, which gave a glimmer of hope to investors and traders that hung on to their shares. The panic continued, however, on Black Monday (October 28, 1929), when the NYSE market closed down 12.8 percent. On Black Tuesday (October 29), the volume for trading increased to unforeseen levels, with more than 16 million shares were traded. This lead the NYSE Dow Jones Industrial Average losing another 12 percent. By the market close on 29th, the DJIA had already lost 39.6% since the stock market market high on September 3rd. As for individual major companies performance during these distressed times, General Electric fell from 396 on September 3, 1929, to 210 on October 29. American Telephone and Telegraph dropped 100 points during the panic and DuPont bottomed from a summer of 1929 high of 217 to 80. As for the general market, the bottom of the bear market did not come until July of 1932, by which time the market had lost almost 89% of its value from the September 1929 high. |