SEC: Exchanges agree to new ‘circuit breakers’

Source: Associated Press

Last week’s historic market plunge prompts investigation

By Daniel Wagner and Stevenson Jacobs
updated 5:34 p.m. MT, Mon., May 10, 2010

NEW YORK - The major securities exchanges put aside some of their differences Monday and agreed to coordinate trading rules to prevent stock plunges like last week's historic dive.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the six exchanges agreed in principle during a meeting with regulators to a uniform system of "circuit breakers." Those are restrictions that would curb trading when a stock index or individual stock or other security rises or falls to a specified level in the course of a trading day.

Four days after the plunge that sent the Dow Jones industrials down to a loss of nearly 1,000 points in less than 30 minutes, regulators were still saying publicly that they did not know the exact reason for the drop. But there is a growing belief that the varying trading rules on different exchanges contributed to the intensity of the selling and the size of the market's slide.

People familiar with the situation said regulators believe the disruption was caused by the way different exchanges manage their trades and rapid price swings. A definitive answer could take weeks because regulators are going through information from across the market by hand, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37064716/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

By seniors who have slowed way, way down.

let's face it, anything that would really be preventative would take the fun out of all their gambling

people's pockets. It's completely gamed.

For a while there were talks about a possible cyberattack.

Think of the panic.

This is bullshit that they haven't found out where it came from.

I know that my 401K took a beating and that there's not a damn thing I can do about it. On the other hand, people that have enough money and power over their money and fell into this got their trades canceled. So, money disappeared out of the market, where did it go?

Not in the stock markets or derivatives exchanges.