The Race to Zero

Stock prices can go down as well as up. Never in financial history has this adage been more apt than on 6 May 2010. Then, the so-called ‘Flash Crash’ sent shock-waves through global equity markets. The Dow Jones experienced its largest ever intraday point fall, losing $1 trillion of market value in the space of half an hour. History is full of such fat-tailed falls in stocks. Was this just another to add to the list, perhaps compressed into a smaller time window?

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