What did stock market speculation have to do with stock market crash?

Answer 1

A Stock Market crash is an abrupt drop in stock prices, which may trigger a prolonged bear market or signal economic trouble ahead.

Market crashes can be made worse be fear in the market and herd behavior among panicked investors to sell.

Several measures have been put in place to prevent stock market crashes, including circuit breakers and trading curbs to lessen the effect of a sudden crash.

Stock market crash of 1929, also called the Great Crash, a sharp decline in U.S. stock market values in 1929 that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Depression lasted approximately 10 years and affected both industrialized and nonindustrialized countries in many parts of the world.

During the mid- to late 1920s, the stock market in the United States underwent rapid expansion. It continued for the first six months following President Herbert Hoover’s inauguration in January 1929. The prices of stocks soared to fantastic heights in the great “Hoover bull market,” and the public, from banking and industrial magnates to chauffeurs and cooks, rushed to brokers to invest their liquid assets or their savings in securities, which they could sell at a profit. Billions of dollars were drawn from the banks into Wall Street for brokers’ loans to carry margin accounts. The spectacles of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi Bubble had returned. People sold their Liberty Bonds and mortgaged their homes to pour their cash into the stock market. In the midsummer of 1929 some 300 million shares of stock were being carried on margin, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a peak of 381 points in September. Any warnings of the precarious foundations of this financial house of cards went unheeded.

The panic began again on Black Monday (October 28), with the market closing down 12.8 percent. On Black Tuesday (October 29) more than 16 million shares were traded. The Dow lost another 12 percent and closed at 198—a drop of 183 points in less than two months. Prime securities tumbled like the issues of bogus gold mines. General Electric fell from 396 on September 3 to 210 on October 29. American Telephone and Telegraph dropped 100 points. DuPont fell from a summer high of 217 to 80, United States Steel from 261 to 166, Delaware and Hudson from 224 to 141, and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) common stock from 505 to 26. Political and financial leaders at first affected to treat the matter as a mere spasm in the market, vying with one another in reassuring statements. President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon led the way with optimistic predictions that business was “fundamentally sound” and that a great revival of prosperity was “just around the corner.” Although the Dow nearly reached the 300 mark again in 1930, it sank rapidly in May 1930. Another 20 years would pass before the Dow regained enough momentum to surpass the 200-point level.