Where did all the money go when the stock market crashed in 1929?
In the immediate aftermath, there was a run on the banks, where citizens took their money out, if they could get it, and hid their savings under mattresses, in bookshelves, or anywhere else they felt was safe. Some went so far as to exchange their dollars for gold and ship it out of the country.
Simply put, the stock market crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression because everyone lost money. Investors and businesses both put significant amounts of money into the market, and when it crashed, tremendous amounts of money were lost. Businesses closed and people lost their savings.
Several individuals who bet against or “shorted” the market became rich or richer. Percy Rockefeller, William Danforth, and Joseph P. Kennedy made millions shorting stocks at this time. They saw opportunity in what most saw as misfortune.
On October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday" hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Around $14 billion of stock value was lost, wiping out thousands of investors.
When the market rebounded, Getty was a rich man, thanks to his action when the economy appeared to be at its worst. The same thing happened to people like Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, and Carl Icahn during the Great Recession of 2008. Each zigged when the rest of the world zagged.
When a stock tumbles and an investor loses money, the money doesn't get redistributed to someone else. Drops in account value reflect dwindling investor interest and a change in investor perception of the stock.
If the price of your stocks drops while you are holding it, you have not lost any money at all. Values fluctuate, but you are holding stocks, not money. It only becomes money again when you sell it. If you sell your stocks for less than you paid for them, only then have you lost money.
- Baseball star Babe Ruth, who made $80,000 a year in Depression-era dollars.
- Robber John Dillinger, who raked in more than $3 million in today's dollars.
- Supermarket pioneer Michael J. ...
- Charles Darrow, creator of the Monopoly game, who became the world's first millionaire. ...
- Oil man J.
- This has all happened before and it will all happen again.
- Food. ...
- Household products + essential consumables. ...
- Healthcare. ...
- Communications. ...
- Capital goods. ...
- Security. ...
- Anyone who keeps advertising & innovating.
Many people who owned stocks that went down a lot would have been OK eventually, except they bought on margin and were ruined. The best performing investments during the Depression were government bonds (many corporations stopped paying interest on their bonds) and annuities.
Where did the money go during the Great Depression?
The depressed economy caused many banks (especially small banks) to go bankrupt. At that time there was no deposit insurance, so many people withdrew their deposits from banks and kept their money as currency. Many bank runs occurred, as depositors were wary of bankruptcy.
Many smaller banks, such as this one in Haverhill, Iowa, lacked sufficient reserves to stay in business and became no more than convenient billboards. Many of the small banks had lent large portions of their assets for stock market speculation and were virtually put out of business overnight when the market crashed.
The main cause of the Wall Street crash of 1929 was the long period of speculation that preceded it, during which millions of people invested their savings or borrowed money to buy stocks, pushing prices to unsustainable levels.
In the early 1930s prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms. In some cases, the price of a bushel of corn fell to just eight or ten cents. Some farm families began burning corn rather than coal in their stoves because corn was cheaper.
The crash lasted until 1932, resulting in the Great Depression, a time in which stocks lost nearly 90% of their value. 9 The Dow didn't fully recover until November of 1954.
Not everyone, however, lost money during the worst economic downturn in American history. Business titans such as William Boeing and Walter Chrysler actually grew their fortunes during the Great Depression.
The Great Depression of 1929–39
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. This was the worst financial and economic disaster of the 20th century. Many believe that the Great Depression was triggered by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and later exacerbated by the poor policy decisions of the U.S. government.
- Sheldon Adelson. Rank: 1. Wealth lost in 2008: $24 billion. ...
- Warren Buffett. Rank: 2. Wealth lost in 2008: $16.5 billion. ...
- Bill Gates. Rank: 3. ...
- Kirk Kerkorian. Rank: 4. ...
- Larry Page. Rank: 5. ...
- Sergey Brin. Rank: 6. ...
- Larry Ellison. Rank: 7. ...
- Steven Ballmer. Rank: 9.
Money held in an interest bearing account like a money market account, a savings account or others is generally safe from losses stemming from a stock market decline. Bonds, including various Treasury securities can also be a safe haven. That said, beyond cash-type accounts nothing is totally safe from losses.
No. A stock price can't go negative, or, that is, fall below zero. So an investor does not owe anyone money. They will, however, lose whatever money they invested in the stock if the stock falls to zero.
How do you protect your money if the stock market crashes?
Other smart advice for protecting your portfolio against a market crash includes hedging your bets by playing the options game; paying off debts to keep a stable balance sheet, and using tax-loss harvesting to mitigate your losses.
Investors who held their stocks and continued investing will do even better. They bought stocks while prices were down, which means they'll get larger returns. Investors who sold their stocks already locked in their losses, so their portfolios can't bounce back.
Answer and Explanation:
The reality of this is that the money in a stock market is "virtual" that is, it never existed physically. This, therefore, means that if there is a crash in the stock market, the money disappears, or rather it doesn't go anywhere since it never existed in the first place.
Someone holding a long position (owns the stock) is, of course, hoping the investment will appreciate. A drop in price to zero means the investor loses his or her entire investment: a return of -100%. To summarize, yes, a stock can lose its entire value.
Most sources agree that adjusting for inflation, John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was the richest American in history in terms of wealth vs. contemporary GDP.
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