2010 Flash Crash
 Video of the S&P500 futures during the Flash Crash
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The May 6, 2010, Flash Crash also known as The Crash of 2:45, the 2010 Flash Crash or simply the Flash Crash, was a United States trillion-dollar, which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes. Stock indexes, such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite, collapsed and rebounded very rapidly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest intraday point drop (from the opening) up to that point, plunging 998.5 points (about 9%), most within minutes, only to recover a large part of the loss. It was also the second-largest intraday point swing (difference between intraday high and intraday low) up to that point, at 1,010.14 points. The prices of stocks, stock index futures, options and exchange-traded fund (ETFs) were volatile, thus trading volume spiked. A CFTC 2014 report described it as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.
According to a December 6, 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal, new regulations put in place following the 2010 Flash Crash—when "bids on dozens of ETFs (and other stocks) fell as low as a penny a share—proved to be inadequate to protect investors in the August 24, 2015 flash crash, "when the price of many ETFs appeared to come unhinged from their underlying value."—ETFs were put under greater scrutiny by regulators and investors. Analysts at Morningstar claim that,
"ETFs are a 'digital-age technology' governed by "Depression-era legislation."
On April 21, 2015, nearly five years after the incident, the U.S. Department of Justice laid "22 criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation" against Navinder Singh Sarao, a trader. Among the charges included was the use of spoofing algorithms; just prior to the Flash Crash, he placed thousands of E-mini S&P 500 stock index futures contracts which he planned on canceling later. These orders amounting to about "$200 million worth of bets that the market would fall" were "replaced or modified 19,000 times" before they were canceled. Spoofing, layering, and front running are now banned.
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