This day in 1929: Black Tuesday

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Last edited Tue Oct 29, 2013, 09:55 AM - Edit history (1)

Wall Street Crash of 1929, Timeline
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929#Timeline

Timeline

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Over the weekend, the events were covered by the newspapers across the United States. On October 28, "Black Monday", more investors decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 13%.

The next day, "Black Tuesday", October 29, 1929, about sixteen million shares were traded, and the Dow lost an additional 30 points, or 12%, amid rumors that U.S. President Herbert Hoover would not veto the pending Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act. The volume of stocks traded on October 29, 1929 was a record that was not broken for nearly 40 years.

On October 29, William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks in order to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the market, but their efforts failed to stop the large decline in prices. Due to the massive volume of stocks traded that day, the ticker did not stop running until about 7:45 p.m. that evening. The market had lost over $30 billion in the space of two days which included $14 billion on October 29 alone.

Bettmann / Corbis

On the day of the collapse, the exchange lost $14 billion in value, ten times the annual budget of the federal government at that time.