In the 1920’s, the U.S. Stock market underwent a rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929. The production in factories and work places had declined and the unemployment rate had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of the value. Low wages, proliferation of debt, struggling agriculture sector and excess of large bank loans that couldn't be liquidated all led to the stock market crash.
The stock market prices began to decline in September and early October 1929. On the 18th of October, the fall in the stock market began; that’s when most people started to panic. Then on October 24th, Black Thursday, a record of 12,894,650 shares had been traded. The investment companies and leading bankers attempted to try and stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock. On the following Monday the market went into a freefall. On Tuesday, October 29th, the stock prices had collapsed completely. The shares that had been traded that day on the New York Stock Exchange were 16,410,030. The stock tickers ran hours behind because of how much treading the machinery was experiencing; it couldn’t handle all that exchange going on simultaneously.
After Black Tuesday, the stock prices had nowhere to go but up, so there was considerable recovery during succeeding weeks. The prices began to decrease due to the United States going into the Great Depression. In 1932, the stocks were only worth 20% of their value that they were in the summer of 1929. Surprisingly enough, the stock market crash was not the sole cause of the great depression, but it did act as an accelerator to the global economic collapse. In 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed and the unemployment was almost up to 15 million people or 30% of the workforce.