how the stock market crashed Essay

During the 1920s or the “Roaring Twenties,” there was monumental social and political changes. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled, so there was lots of money to be spent and that's exacting what the American people did. One opportunity available for spending newly gained wealth was purchasing stocks from Wall Street , the banking district for the NYSE. For a while, buying stocks was something only the rich upper class could participate in but a new method of purchasing shares called “buying on margin” allowed the middle class to buy shares of stocks by borrowing the money from a broker

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

Many people believe the Stock Market crash and the Great Depression are one in the same. In the nineteen twenties the Dow Jones went from sixty to four hundred. People became instant millionaires. Trading became America’s favorite pastime and a quick way to get rich. There were Americans mortgaging their home and investing their life savings in stock such as ford. However, there were many fake companies that formed to deceive the inexperience investors. Many investors did not believe that a crash was possible; they all thought the market would always go up.

The Great Depression remains to be the worst economic slump ever in American history and one which spread practically all over the industrialized world. The Depression bombarded in late 1929 and lasted nearly a decade. Many factors elemented the depth of the widespread prosperity. However, combined, the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade remain the key of all elements.

4. The stock market was maintained and investors were able to buy stocks again wholeheartedly

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.

<br>Stock prices had been rising steadily since 1921, but in 1928 and 1929 they surged forward, with the average price of stocks rising over 40 percent. The stock market was totally unregulated. Margin buying in particular proceeded at a feverish pace as customers borrowed up to 75 percent of the purchase price of stocks. That easy credit lured more speculators and less creditworthy investors

Americans in the late 1920s received plenty of this type of encouragement from political leaders and assumed financial experts. Galbraith mentions the optimism of Calvin Coolidge as he was leaving office, the commitment of bankers such as Charles E. Mitchell to keep the boom going, and the ingenuity of John Jacob Raskob to include the average person in the market. He even points out Irving Fisher’s assumption that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” The lay person already infected with the belief that anyone could get rich in the market now had the financial means and the support of informed intellectuals behind them. The choice to buy on margin seems to have been forgone conclusion to these people who were now buying into the dream everyone was selling them.

The basic problem was that there were too many shareholders – lots of people had speculated on the stock market with money borrowed from banks, with the result that they sold in a panic the minute share prices rose, starting an upward spiral.

Thus, lots of entrepreneurs joined the stock market, which made speculation happened

Not only did individuals invest in stocks, but also did banks and industries invest in stalks. When the stock market plummeted, banks and industries lost their money and their enthusiasm. The banks' and the industries' invested money in shares had lost value and gist and meaning and purpose and importance and significance. The stock crash created hysteria causing people to take their savings

America’s Great Depression is believed as having begun in 1929 with the Stock Market crash, and ending in 1941 with America’s entry into World War II. In order to fully comprehend the repercussions and devastating effects of the Crash of 1929, it is important to examine the factors that contributed to the catastrophic event which led to The Great Depression. The Great Depression was the worst economic slump in U.S. history, and it spread to most of the industrialized world. Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920s, and the

“By 1929, 2 out of every 5 dollars a bank loaned [to people] were used to purchase stocks.”( Suddath) The days that transpired are infamous and will live on through the history of America.

In the 1920’s the U.S. economy was booming. The value of stocks were rising and being bought. People were buying tons of stocks. They put as little as ten percent in. Then everything started tumbling down and people lost about ten times as much as they put in.

After languishing for the past six years after the financial crisis, the Chinese stock markets suddenly took off last summer, becoming a cauldron of voracious buying, selling and spectacular profit-taking. In fact, drawn by the casino-like profits to be made in the boom, more and more small investors flocked to the thousands of brokerage houses that are now proliferating in every Chinese city in order to buy and sell while staring up at flickering electronic data boards charting the rise and fall of equity prices.Stock shares of newly listed companies soared thousands of percentage points within months of their initial public offerings, driven upward by a green and growing cadre of relatively unsophisticated private investors that