How Stock Market Crashes Happen
On 19 October 1987 the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% in a single day. How can a market lose so much when no factory or farm has changed? This film explains the machinery: what a share is, how an order book sets a price, why expectations and interest rates move it, how bubbles and herd behaviour build, and how borrowed money turns a fall into a cascade of forced selling. Then it follows the great crashes, told from the official record: 1929 and the Great Depression, Black Monday in 1987, the 1997 Asian financial crisis that began in Thailand, the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic crash, and the circuit breakers that now pause trading in the United States and Thailand. Send a wave of sell orders through an order book, switch on margin calls, replay five crashes and run a crash day against the brakes. The film is education only: it gives no investment advice and makes no predictions.
When everyone sells at once
How stock market crashes happen.
A piece of a company
What you own when you own a share.
Where a price comes from
Two queues, and the place they meet.
A bet on the future
Prices move when expectations do.
Expectations are contagious
A loop that runs both ways.
Buying on margin
How a fall becomes a cascade.
The great crash
Black Thursday, Black Monday, Black Tuesday.
From a crash to a depression
Twenty-five years to climb back.
Selling by formula
A crash at the speed of computers.
The day after
A promise of cash, and a new kind of brake.
The crisis that began in Thailand
Borrowed dollars and a currency peg: the Tom Yum Kung crisis.
The dot-com bust
A bubble in the future of the internet.
From houses to banks
When the lenders themselves fall.
The fastest fall
A pandemic, four halts, and a rebound.
Circuit breakers
Pausing the loop.
When everyone sells at once
Different triggers, the same machine.
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