On Tuesday October 29th, 1929, Wall Street witnessed a 13% decline in the Dow Jones, an episode that became known in financial mythology as “Black Tuesday.” It is generally recognized that Black Tuesday was the beginning of the Great Depression. Between early September and the end of October 1929 the market lost a total of 40% in less than 8 weeks. In reality Black Tuesday was just the end of the beginning of the crash on Wall Street.
As you can see from the graph below, the market continued to fall for several years after Black Tuesday. By the end of the slide some pundits conjectured that the market might actually go to zero. From its high of 386.10 in September ’29 to its low of 40.60 on July 29, 1932, the market had lost a total of 89%! Click here to download the article….