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SEC Blames Computer Algorithm For 'Flash Crash'
Lucas123 writes "The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued an 87-page report (PDF) on the results of a months-long investigation into the May 6 'flash crash' that sent the Dow tumbling almost 1,000 points in a half hour. The Commissions are holding a single trading firm's automated trade execution platform responsible for the crash, saying it dumped 75,000 sell orders into the Chicago Mercantile Exchange over a period of minutes causing an already volatile market to come crashing down. The SEC has already enacted some quick rules to pause trading if a stock price should rise or fall by 10% in a five minute period, but the regulators said they expect the results of the investigation to prompt additional rules limiting the functions of automated computer trading systems."
You didn't have to tell us you where a bad programmer, the VB code was a big enough clue~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It was a Solaris backend using a database on Linux that had a Java front end on a Windows PC. The trader monitoring the system was watching porn his Macbook Pro and didn't notice when things went kaflooey.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
So; it would have been fine had they used *BSD ;^)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
The problem was there's similar rules for crashes of individual stocks, but those rules were only at the NYSE and not everywhere. Now they're everywhere. Problem solved.