The stock market crash of 1929 that helped lead to the Great Depression, is a capitulation. In fact, it had more than one day of it.
On Oct. 24, 1929—what's known as Black Thursday—share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. A then-record number of 12.9 million shares was traded.
But more was to follow. Oct. 28, the first "Black Monday," more investors decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38 points, or 13 percent.
The next day, "Black Tuesday," Oct. 29, 1929, about 16 million shares were traded, and the Dow lost an additional 30 points.
More recently, there was a massive sell off or panic selling of stocks on Oct. 10, 2008, in what can be considered a capitulation. Not only U.S. stocks, but global markets had major declines of 10 percent or more on one day.
Investors flooded exchanges with sell orders, dragging all benchmarks sharply lower. It's believed fears of a global recession and the U.S. housing slump sparked the sell-off.