Lest We Forget | 1929 and the Great Depression

From Investipedia

http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes5.asp

Crashes: The Great Depression (1929)

When: October 21, 24 and 29, 1929 

Where: USA

The amount the market declined from peak to bottom: A string of terrible days led to a more than 40% drop in the market from the beginning of September 1929 to the end of October 1929. In fact, the market continued to decline until July 1932 when it bottomed out, down nearly 90% from its 1929 highs.

Synopsis: Despite the Florida crash, Americans were as bullish as ever. The stock market was guaranteed to make everyone rich as the first world war had been won, and industrialization was resulting in previously-unimaginable luxuries. It was a good time to be American.

Since the stock market was believed to be a no-risk, no-brain world where everything went up, many people poured all their savings into it without learning about the system or the underlying companies. With the flood of uneducated investors, the market was ripe for some manipulation and swindling. Investment bankers, brokers, traders, and sometimes owners banded together to manipulate stock prices and get out with gains. They did this by subtly acquiring large chunks of stock between them and trading them between each other for slightly more each time. When the public noticed the progression of price on the ticker tape, everyone would buy the stock. So, the market manipulators would then sell off their overpriced shares for a healthy profit. On and on the cycle went as uneducated investors turned a profit by selling the manipulated, over-priced shares to someone who wanted to have a rising stock.

Behavioral finance shows that the less an investor knows, the easier it is for him or her to be swept up in popular opinion (herd mentality). This behavior is a double-edged sword because the ignorant investors are also easily spooked into panic. Both actions, joining and fleeing, have very little basis in the quality of the news or the quality of the market. Instead, the herd follows the cow that runs the fastest, trampling the market.