the.com/market crash
The market discovering gravity still applies, all at once, on a Tuesday.
means A sudden, severe drop in the prices of securities across a market, usually triggered by panic selling after a buildup of unsustainable speculation.
from 'Crash' has meant a sudden violent collapse (literally the sound of breaking) since medieval times, and English speakers started applying it figuratively to financial ruin by the 1800s — a bank or business could 'crash' long before a market did. 'Market' traces back through Latin 'mercatus,' from 'mercari,' to trade, kin to 'merchant' and 'mercantile.' The pairing became permanently lodged in the language after specific catastrophic collapses — most famously the one in 1929 — taught everyone exactly what the phrase meant, viscerally, all at once.
- official threshold
- 20% drop from recent highs
- panic speed
- faster than the rally that caused it
- root cause
- usually leverage, always blamed on headlines
- historical irony
- best buying days cluster right inside crashes