Black Thursday Stock Market Crash

During the 1920's millions of Americans began investing in stocks for the first time. They heard about how rich people were getting by investing so they all decided to do it. Many new investors entered the stock market using borrowed money. Stock market prices rose steadily as inflated market demand outpaced increases in the capital value of businesses. Investors began to realize that a large imbalance existed between stock prices and the amount of money needed to back them up, and began to sell. On October 29, 1929, great numbers of people tried to sell their stocks all at once. This created chaos in the accounting of stocks and for brokers. The New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges prices dropped so dramatically that this event became known as the crash of 1929. Millions of investors lost their savings in the crash and many were deeply in debt since

The 1929 Stock Market Crash "We’d like to thank you, Herbert Hoover/ For really showing us the way/ You dirty rat, you Bureaucrat, you/ Made us what we are today (www.stlyrics.com)." These lyrics from the musical Annie place the blame for the 1929 Stock Market Crash solely on the then former president Herbert Hoover. The truth of the matter is that placing the blame for the Stock Market Crash on Mr. Hoover is very unfair. Herbert Hoover was only one of many causes of the Stock Market Crash. It is easy to try to place the blame for one of the most destructive events in the history of the American economy on one person, but the real causes lie in the rampant speculation, the lack of regulation of the stock market, and the questionable ethics of many of the companies and brokers that were involved in the market. Although the 1929 Stock Market Crash is generally blamed on a few scapegoats, it was actually caused by a multitude of factors, which makes finding a scapegoat impossible.

The stock Market crash was caused because the market was overrated, overbought and dominated. The economic conditions were not helping anyone. The Crash was due to the market opening of 11% or less. Financiers and institutions chipped in with proposals over the market price to stop the panic. Even though the losses on that day were smaller compared to the next two days. Yet, this loss was unreal, as the next Monday, commonly now known as Black Monday the losses were dropping 13% without provoking the margin calls. Afterward, the offers disappeared completely and the market fell again, another 12%. From this point on the market completely fell hitting rock bottom causing horrible things to go wrong. This was one of the factors that lead to the great depression.

The United States signaled a new era after the end of World War I. It was an era of hopefulness when many people invested their money that was under the mattresses at home or in the bank into the stock market. People migrated to the prosperous cities with the hopes of finding much better life. In the 1920s, the stock market reputation did not appear to be a risky investment, until 1929.First noticeable in 1925, the stock market prices began to rise as more people invested their money. During 1925 and 1926, the stock prices vacillated but in 1927, it had an upward trend. The stock market boom had started by 1928. The stock market was no longer a long-term investment because the boom changed the investor’s way of thinking (“The Stock Market

There were additional signs by the spring of 1929 signaled a serious setback in the American economy. There were also a few trustworthy people warning about the future, big crash. As a month or two passed by, those people who warned the investors were labeled doubters and neglected. When the market surged forward throughout the summer of 1929, the mini-crash and the pessimists were both almost forgotten. The stock prices reached their peak from June through August of 1929. The constant increase of stocks was unavoidable to many. “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,” economist Irving Fisher stated what many investors desired to believe. The stock market reached its highest with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing at 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The market started its downward drop few days later. The prices vacillated during September and into October until the final downfall on Black Thursday. Thursday, October 24, 1929, the market prices dropped.

In 1929 the stock market crashes due to an unstable economy, over speculation and Government policies. Many people think that the stock crash was to blame for the Great Depression but that is not correct. Both the crash and depression were the result of problems with the economy that were still underneath society 's minds. The depression affected people in a series of ways: poverty is spreading causing farm distress, unemployment, health, family stresses and unfortunately, discrimination increases. America tended to blame Hoover for the depression and all the problems. When the 1932 election came people weren’t very fond of Hoover, but Roosevelt on the other hand introduced Happy Days and everyone loved that idea.

Most of the United States money was sucked into the stock market. The current President, Herbert Hoover, knew this was not going to end well and warned the investors to be more cautious. These investors did not listen and kept investing money they did not have into the market. This led up to one of the main causes of the Great Depression. The buying on a Margin and extreme amounts of loans caused the stock market to grow unsteady.

It is said that the cause of the catastrophic stock market crash known as the great depression was due mostly to uncontrolled political and industrial systems otherwise known as capitalism. However, the timeline leading up to the Great Depression proves that many other factors played a role in the stock market crash that occurred in the decade of the 1930's. So lets take a look at rather four, factors contributing to the great depression that we will further discuss in the following paragraphs. Four of the main causes that led up to the great depression were unequal distribution of wealth, uncontrolled political and industrial systems, high tariffs and war debts.

Everybody spent all of their money on the stocks. People and most banks wasted it by investing in a project that is never going to work and then they lose all of that money they put into it. President Hoover was completely blamed for the depression, newspapers were called hoover blankets, hoover huts which were houses and towns were named hoovervilles.

economy, people began buying stocks on the margin. They would borrow most of the stock’s price from a stockbroker and only pay a little bit of the price. If the stock prices kept rising, this system would work well, but if the prices fell, people could not pay the loan back. Near the end of the 1929 year, prices were too high, so people wanted to sell their stocks. They thought the prices would lower soon. Stock prices did go lower and people were not buying. They all wanted to sell their stocks. Prices went even lower on October 29, where 16 million stocks were sold. This caused the collapse of the market.

The Great Depression was 1929 through 1939 was at its lowest in 1933. The stock market crash because of the rise and fall of the stock split in 1927 as a contributor too for mass amounts of inflation and overvalued of the stock price. The first instance of this was on October 24th where the market had opened 11% lower than the closing before, altogether investors tried to pump the stock with more money with higher bids for shares it had only been an illusion. The following Monday the market had fallen 13% upon opening for bidding investors had lost a plethora of money. The following Tuesday it had fallen another 12%. This day, Oct. 29, 1929, was dubbed “Black Tuesday” and the events following were a speeding up to an already declining economy

Many factors lead to the depression such as poor international/national policies, unregulated financial sector and under consumption (The Great Depression: The Crash, 1929-1932, slide 4). One major factor was an ever-increasing rift amongst wealthy individuals in the U.S and the rest of the country. By 1929, a fifth of the wealthiest Americans owned more than half of

A bubble of investment caused the stock market crash in New York as investors discovered the market and marginal trading and inflated it with capital as it was relatively new created in 1817. The increased level of speculation forced a bull market in the five years before the crash the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased in value fivefold, drawing a larger investor pool that sustained the bubble. This provided investment for a number of industries and infrastructure though it is also what fuelled the excess or the roaring twenties, though the level of speculation inflated the growth. During this period, there was not the level of financial regulation and hence, most banks were also participating in this speculative investing with depositor funds. Thus, many believed that the market would remain bullish and invested on stocks with margins of up to two-thirds of the face value of the

Arguably the most important factor that influenced the Great Depression was the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was a four-day collapse of stock prices and it was and still is the worst decline in U.S. history. The Stock Market Crash started on October 29, 1929, this day was also known as “Black Thursday”. Hundreds of businesses and people were affected dramatically by this event. It forced thousands of businesses to shut down and left millions of U.S. citizens unemployed. The Dow Jones industrial Average even dropped down by 25%, it was calculated that the “United States $30 billion in market value which is equivalent to nearly $400 billion in today’s economy”(Amadeo). The Stock Market Crash impacted so many people because of all the trades and sold businesses. A record breaking “12,894,650 shares were traded”(History.com), which led to the outrageous rate of unemployment. Nearly 15 million people became unemployed which is 30% of the workforce in the United States. Since the market crashed so drastically and so many people sold their businesses and traded

The average stock price tripled from 1925 to 1929. However, the stock market took a definite change of direction on October 24, 1929 when a record 16,410,030 shares were sold. This abrupt stock market crash led to the next decade, known as the Great Depression (“Roaring Twenties”).