At one point in the crash tickers were 68 minutes behind. An average of about $50,000,000 a minute was wiped out on the exchange. A few investors that lost all of their money jumped to their deaths from office buildings. Others gathered in the streets outside the Stock Exchange to learn how much they had lost. (Black Thursday ).
There are five proposed reasons as to why the stock market crashed. One of the reasons was that stocks were overpriced and the crash brought the share prices back to a normal level. However, some studies using standard measures of stock value, such as Price to Earning ratios and Price to Dividend ratios, argue that the share prices were not too high. Another reason is that there were massive frauds and illegal activity in the 1920's stock market. However, evidence revealed that there was probably very little actual insider trading or illegal manipulation. .
Margin buying is another reason why people believed that the crash happened. Though it is not the main reason, there was very little margin relative to the value of the market. The new President of the Federal Reserve Board, Adolph Miller, tightened the monetary policy and set out to lower the stock prices since he perceived that speculation led stocks to be overpriced, causing damage to the economy. Also, in the beginning of 1929, the interest rate charged on broker loans rose tremendously. This policy reduced the amount of broker loans that originated from banks and lowered the liquidity of non-financial and other corporations that financed brokers and dealers. Lastly, many public officials commented that the stock price was too high. Herbert Hoover publicly stated that stocks were overvalued and that speculation hurt the economy. Hoover's statement suggested to the public the lengths he was willing to go to control the stock market. These kinds of statements encouraged investors to believe that the market would continue to be strong, which could be one of the causes of the crash.
