The Stock Market Crash of 1929

Wall Street. Everyone’s heard of it. But what’s on it is a lot of circulating money, changing prices, and full of people wanting to invest in their favorite companies. The Stock Market.

The Stock Market is, quote, “The market in which shares of publicly held companies are issued and traded either through exchanges or over-the-counter markets.”(www.investopedia.com). Companies have stocks, which people can buy. The price of these stocks change based on the company and what they do. The prices can go up and down, and people buy and sell based on the price of the stock, the value of the company, and the potential to rise, with the intent on making money. Now, a stock market crash is when the price of the stocks of many companies drops extraordinarily low, extraordinarily fast.

Now, during the 1920’s, people thought that the stock market would keep going up and up indefinitely, and people kept buying stocks. By October, the stock prices started to drop. By Oct 18, people started to panic and started taking their money from the banks;but the banks didn’t have the money, because they too, had invested it in the stock market. This is called a “bank run”, where the people want their money out, but the banks simply don’t have it. Due to this, people went poor. Imagine you're 60ish, maybe 70, and you’ve saved up all this money over your life for retirement, but then it just disappeared. That’s what happened to most people in the 1920’s. The banks kept betting and buying stocks with other people's money. Then when the market crashed, the banks lost all the money, thus being unable to give it to the people.

Wall Street. Everyone’s heard of it. But what’s on it is a lot of circulating money, changing prices, and full of people wanting to invest in their favorite companies. The Stock Market. It crashed 1929, and sent America into the Great Depression.