The cause of the stock market crash of 1987 was primarily program trading, used by institutions to protect themselves from significant market weakness. Some secondary factors included excessive valuations, illiquid markets and market psychology The idea of using computer systems to engage in large-scale trading strategies was still relatively new to Wall Street and the consequences of a system capable of placing thousands of orders during a crash never had been tested. These computer programs automatically began to liquidate stocks as certain loss targets were hit, pushing prices lower. To the dismay of the exchanges, program trading led to a domino effect as the falling markets triggered more stop-loss orders. The frantic selling activated yet another round of stop-loss orders, which dragged markets into a downward spiral. Since the same programs also automatically turned off all buying, bids vanished all around the stock market at basically the same time.