see what you can do about this thing. Assume we’re on our own. Assume it’s a matter of life and death.”
Savas nodded. Lightfoote stared between them and then back at her server.
“Okay. But be careful what you ask for.”
17
Headline News
CHAOS ROILS WALL STREET AS WORLD MARKETS SHUTTERED
By Christina Patrikia, Washington Post
In an unprecedented turn of events, the major world stock exchanges were forced to suspend trading as markets oscillated wildly and company fortunes were obliterated and made in instants.
Beginning almost immediately after the opening bell was rung at the New York Stock Exchange, and despite normal after-hours trading the night before, chaos hit the floor as share prices of everything from Fortune 500 companies to bundled options on the futures market dropped or increased thousands of percentage points in seconds. The changes swung back and forth, even on individual stocks, at the speed of the electronic trading computers.
“The system went haywire,” said Brian Gunter, an analyst from Brookmans. “It was faster than the human mind could follow. All in electronic trading, across the board stock dumps and purchases, seemingly at random.”
It appears that automated trade-halting safeguards designed to prevent massive stock fluctuations either did not function as expected or were unable to handle the volume and nature of the spurious trades.
“We are assuming a major malfunction,” said Gordon Jones, a technical support specialist working for the NASDAQ exchange. “Either the safeguards to prevent market meltdowns failed or something more systematic occurred. With current software, trades are executed in less than a half a millionth of a second. Feedback loops at those speeds can lead to major problems on time scales human beings can’t react to. It’s a very nonlinear system.”
While there had been previous scares such as the rogue program from Knight Capital that nearly halted trading in 2012, no glitch in the now-ubiquitous trading computers had caused anything approaching what took place today. Representatives from the world exchanges have been in conference calls since trading was halted in the early morning.
Washington Post financial correspondent Angela Kong explained: “World leaders are involved. It is an unusual crisis. You have a majority of the largest companies in the world now worth pennies on paper, or rather, worth nothing in the digital systems storing their valuations. We’re talking IBM, Apple, Google, GE—you name it. They’re wiped out. Meanwhile, there are a host of nothing companies, green energy, solar, drug companies in India that have instantly grown to the size of Google. It’s economic chaos. There is talk of a market reset.”
Kong quoted several sources within the administration stating that, once the market software had been fixed, there were plans to resume trading at the prices on shares at which the exchanges had opened this morning. The move would be unprecedented, and is not without vocal critics in the government and private sector. However, consensus seemed to be building that only through such action could an unparalleled market collapse be staved off.
In an ominous repeat, the malfunction of the trading software that led to the trading halt in the US markets spread to every exchange across the world. One by one, as each of the major exchanges opened, chaos ensued and trading was stopped. Markets in Asia have not yet opened, but already the Nikkei and Shanghai Stock Exchange are being prepared for an unscheduled shut down to prevent further chaos in the world financial system.
First term senator and political firebrand Nathan Schelot—who rose to power on an election in California rocked by accusations of fraud—was vocal on Capitol Hill following the Press Secretary’s minimal statement on the crisis at noon.
“And is this the leadership we need in a time of turmoil? Now you see the product of a runaway, capitalistic system.
Savas nodded. Lightfoote stared between them and then back at her server.
“Okay. But be careful what you ask for.”
17
Headline News
CHAOS ROILS WALL STREET AS WORLD MARKETS SHUTTERED
By Christina Patrikia, Washington Post
In an unprecedented turn of events, the major world stock exchanges were forced to suspend trading as markets oscillated wildly and company fortunes were obliterated and made in instants.
Beginning almost immediately after the opening bell was rung at the New York Stock Exchange, and despite normal after-hours trading the night before, chaos hit the floor as share prices of everything from Fortune 500 companies to bundled options on the futures market dropped or increased thousands of percentage points in seconds. The changes swung back and forth, even on individual stocks, at the speed of the electronic trading computers.
“The system went haywire,” said Brian Gunter, an analyst from Brookmans. “It was faster than the human mind could follow. All in electronic trading, across the board stock dumps and purchases, seemingly at random.”
It appears that automated trade-halting safeguards designed to prevent massive stock fluctuations either did not function as expected or were unable to handle the volume and nature of the spurious trades.
“We are assuming a major malfunction,” said Gordon Jones, a technical support specialist working for the NASDAQ exchange. “Either the safeguards to prevent market meltdowns failed or something more systematic occurred. With current software, trades are executed in less than a half a millionth of a second. Feedback loops at those speeds can lead to major problems on time scales human beings can’t react to. It’s a very nonlinear system.”
While there had been previous scares such as the rogue program from Knight Capital that nearly halted trading in 2012, no glitch in the now-ubiquitous trading computers had caused anything approaching what took place today. Representatives from the world exchanges have been in conference calls since trading was halted in the early morning.
Washington Post financial correspondent Angela Kong explained: “World leaders are involved. It is an unusual crisis. You have a majority of the largest companies in the world now worth pennies on paper, or rather, worth nothing in the digital systems storing their valuations. We’re talking IBM, Apple, Google, GE—you name it. They’re wiped out. Meanwhile, there are a host of nothing companies, green energy, solar, drug companies in India that have instantly grown to the size of Google. It’s economic chaos. There is talk of a market reset.”
Kong quoted several sources within the administration stating that, once the market software had been fixed, there were plans to resume trading at the prices on shares at which the exchanges had opened this morning. The move would be unprecedented, and is not without vocal critics in the government and private sector. However, consensus seemed to be building that only through such action could an unparalleled market collapse be staved off.
In an ominous repeat, the malfunction of the trading software that led to the trading halt in the US markets spread to every exchange across the world. One by one, as each of the major exchanges opened, chaos ensued and trading was stopped. Markets in Asia have not yet opened, but already the Nikkei and Shanghai Stock Exchange are being prepared for an unscheduled shut down to prevent further chaos in the world financial system.
First term senator and political firebrand Nathan Schelot—who rose to power on an election in California rocked by accusations of fraud—was vocal on Capitol Hill following the Press Secretary’s minimal statement on the crisis at noon.
“And is this the leadership we need in a time of turmoil? Now you see the product of a runaway, capitalistic system.
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