The worst day in stock market history wasn't 1929. Here are the 10 biggest S&P 500 drops on record

Eight of the 10 worst days in S&P 500 history came in just four years: 1929, 1987, 2008 and 2020. No day since March 2020 has made the top 20, and the worst day of 2025, April 4, fell 5.97%, less than a third of the 20.47% drop in 1987.

Wikipedia's ranking of the largest daily S&P 500 changes, which draws on S&P Dow Jones Indices data, ranks every trading day since 1923 by its close-to-close percentage loss, and the 10 below top it, though figures before the index's formal 1957 launch are reconstructed.

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Black Monday remains the worst day in the S&P 500's history. The index fell 20.47%, or 57.86 points, to 224.84, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 22.6%, or 508 points. Some calculations using the Dow's older methods put December 12, 1914, when the New York Stock Exchange reopened after a four-month closure at the start of World War I, at a 24.39% loss, but 1987 is the record in most accounts.

Markets had already been falling worldwide, and the S&P 500 lost 9% in the week before. About 604 million shares traded, almost twice Friday's volume. The crash is usually attributed to a mix of overvalued stocks, program trading and investor panic. The Federal Reserve supplied liquidity to meet unprecedented demand for credit, the index gained 9.10% on October 21, and the exchange introduced trading curbs in 1988. The S&P 500 did not regain its pre-crash high until July 26, 1989.

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The S&P 500 index of the day fell 12.34%, or 3.20 points, to 22.74, and the Dow dropped nearly 13%, a day the Securities and Exchange Commission says went into the history books as Black Monday. Selling had begun four days earlier on Black Thursday, October 24, with the Dow only just past its September 3 peak of 381.17.

Britannica attributes the crash mainly to a long period of speculation, much of it funded by borrowing, with roughly 300 million shares carried on margin by midsummer 1929. A Federal Reserve rate increase in August and a mild recession earlier that summer also contributed, it says.

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The S&P 500 fell 11.98%, or 324.89 points, to 2,386.13, the third-worst day on record. The Dow lost 2,997.10 points, or 12.93%, the largest point drop in its history, and the Nasdaq $NDAQ Composite fell 12.32%, its worst day ever, according to CNBC.

The selling came after the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate to near zero in an emergency Sunday meeting and announced $700 billion in asset purchases. Trading halted for 15 minutes shortly after the open, when the S&P 500 fell more than 7%, and President Donald Trump said the crisis could last until August. The VIX volatility index closed at a record 82.69. From its February 19 high of 3,386.15 to its March 23 low of 2,237.40, the S&P 500 fell 33.9% in just over a month.

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The S&P 500 fell another 10.16%, or 2.31 points, to 20.43, and the Dow dropped nearly 12% on what became known as Black Tuesday, bringing the Dow's combined loss across the two days to 23%. Share prices fell by an estimated $14 billion in a single day.

The market rebounded sharply the next day, with the S&P 500 gaining 12.53%, its second-largest daily gain on record, but the recovery did not last. The Dow reached its low on July 8, 1932, at 41.22, about 89% below its September 1929 peak, and did not match that peak again until 1954.

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The S&P 500 fell 9.92%, or 2.27 points, to 20.61, making November 6 the third 1929 date on the list and the fifth-worst day overall. It came nine days after the worst of October's selling and fell inside the stretch from October 23 to November 13 in which, according to the SEC, the Dow lost 39%.

The economist Stephen Cecchetti has described the October crash as one part of a sustained decline that began September 3, 1929 and continued through February 1933. The index bounced 8.95% on November 14.

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The S&P 500 fell 9.51%, or 260.74 points, to 2,480.64, then the worst day since 1987, and the Dow lost 9.99%. It came a day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and the night after President Donald Trump restricted travel from Europe in an Oval Office address. Another catalyst cited was a disappointing European Central Bank announcement.

Selling was so heavy that trading halted within minutes of the open, at 9:35 a.m. Eastern, after the S&P 500 fell 7%. It was the second market-wide halt in four days, after the first on March 9.

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The S&P 500 fell 9.27%, or 1.10 points, to 10.76 on October 18, 1937, in the middle of a recession that interrupted the recovery from the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve calls the downturn, which lasted from May 1937 to June 1938, the third-worst of the 20th century. Real GDP fell 10%, unemployment hit 20% and industrial production dropped 32%, and another historical account puts the decline in stock prices from March 1937 to April 1938 at 58%.

The Fed points to a contraction in the money supply tied to Federal Reserve and Treasury policies, along with tighter fiscal policy, as possible causes. The recession ended after the Fed rolled back reserve requirements, the Treasury stopped sterilizing gold and the Roosevelt administration returned to expansionary fiscal policy.

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The S&P 500 fell 9.03%, or 90.17 points, to 907.84, and the Dow dropped about 733 points, or 7.9%, then its second-largest point drop ever. Retail sales for September fell 1.2%, more than the 0.7% analysts expected, and the New York Fed's Empire State manufacturing index plunged to minus 24.6 from 7.4 the month before.

The drop came two days after the S&P 500 jumped 11.58%, its fifth-largest daily gain on record, and a day after the nine largest U.S. banks agreed to sell shares to the government, which Dividend.com describes as the largest intervention in American banking since the Great Depression.

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The S&P 500 fell 8.93%, or 80.03 points, to 816.21, ending a five-day winning streak, and the Dow lost 679.95 points, or 7.7%. Financial stocks in the index dropped 17%. Earlier that day the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the U.S. economy had been in recession since December 2007, a full year before.

The Institute for Supply Management's November manufacturing index came in at 36.2, where 50 is the dividing line between growth and contraction, the lowest factory reading since the 1981-82 recession. A third 2008 day, September 29, just missed the list at 8.79%, when Congress rejected an early bank bailout plan.