The biggest stock market crash on Wall Street, which triggered the biggest downturn in the global economy before that of 2008, began exactly 90 years ago. October 24, 1929 was also then a Thursday and was called the "black thursday", “Black Thursday”: after a few boom years, the New York Stock Exchange plummeted, marking a 50% fall in the value of the most significant stocks. A few days later the stock market crash would become uncontrollable, until arriving at the "Big Crash" on Tuesday 29: that Thursday 90 years ago is identified as the first of the trading days that define the so-called "panic of 1929", or otherwise called “Great Depression”.
In reality, Monday 21 October had already been a very negative day. That day there were the first signs (6.091.879 shares were sold) but the economist Irving Fisher hastened to argue that the fall had represented "the elimination of the neurotic retinue", predicting that the situation would improve from then on. The next day Charles Mitchell, director of the National City Bank, also said market conditions were “fundamentally sound” and invited to look positively to the future, hoping that the situation of tranquility would automatically restore itself.
But that was not the case and Thursday 24th was therefore the first of a series of ruinous days for the stock market: they were 12.894.650 shares changed hands, at gradually lower prices, throwing many savers and investors into despair. The session had even begun calmly, but after a few hours the prices began to fall perpendicularly and by 11,00 a climate of fear had spread, so that no one was buying any more: the market was in the throes of psychosis, veritable own panic selling (panic selling). After a slight recovery over the weekend, we will thus reach the Tuesday 29 October, the most disastrous day in the entire history of the stock markets. The quotation index fell by 43 points (nearly 13% of the market value).
