Why did the stock market crash in 1932?

The chart below illustrates the stock market crash that started in 1929, annotated with some events I felt were key (click on chart to enlarge.) I pulled the DJIA chart from Yahoo! Finance (since that's the only free one I have access to) but I should note that Yahoo's charts are sometimes slightly incorrect. read more

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors. read more

The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate the global economic collapse of which it was also a symptom. By 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce. read more