Billions of dollars lost, thousands of businesses closed, and even more people without jobs. The stock market crash of 1929 was a very important event in United States history. This was a pivotal moment in the United States because of the drastic change it had on american lives. In order to fully understand how big of a deal this was a person needs to know a few basic ideas including, what are stocks, the stock market boom of the early 1920’s, what caused the crash, the effects of the crash, and how they fixed it.
“Stocks are ownership stakes in a company” (Calliope). In other words when a person buys stocks that person is buying a piece of that company 's profits The money the company makes is translated into the …show more content…
It was talked about in barbershops, the dining table, the watercooler, everywhere (Stock Market Boom in the 1920s). It seemed as though everyone had an opinion on it which was much different than a few years earlier where people assumed stocks were only for financial experts from new york now everyone had their own view on the topic (Stock Market Boom in the 1920s). This might seem good because everyone were becoming more knowledgeable but at the same time people were getting different theories on how to invest their money that it ended up being overwhelming. Stocks were also easy to purchase there was stockbrokers everywhere in hotel lobbies and on almost every main street in the country (Stock Market Boom in the 1920s). This made it very accessible for someone who made their living traveling. Because of this, Stock prices were on the rise and in the summer of 1929 it peaked to heights never seen before ( Stock Market Boom in the 1920s) This might seem like great news for the united states economy but this was not the case, people would take out loans with banks to buy these stocks and by the end of the summer of 1929 banks were in debt 64 million to the federal reserve after giving out nearly 137 million dollars worth of broker loans (Stock Market Crash of 1929, October 24, 1929-October 29, 1929.) This is manageable if the market is rising but could turn into a very big problem if the market