Quoted Text

Rules set to block repeat of market plunge
BY MARCY GORDON The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Federal regulators on Thursday put in place new rules aimed at preventing a repeat of last month’s harrowing “flash crash” in the stock market.
    Members of the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the rules, which call for U.S. stock exchanges to briefly halt trading of some stocks that make big swings.
    The major exchanges will start putting the trading breaks into effect as early as today for six months. The New York Stock Exchange will begin today’s trading session with five stocks: EOG Resources Inc., Genuine Parts Co., Harley Davidson Inc., Ryder System Inc. and Zimmer Holdings Inc. The exchange will gradually add other stocks early next week, expecting to reach by Wednesday the full number that will be covered.
    The Nasdaq stock market plans to have the new program fully in place on Monday.
    The plan for the “circuit breakers” was worked out by the SEC and the major exchanges following the May 6 market plunge, which saw the Dow Jones industrials lose nearly 1,000 points in less than a half-hour.
    Under the new rules, trading of any Standard & Poor’s 500 stock that rises or falls 10 percent or more in a five-minute period will be halted for five minutes. The “circuit breakers” would be applied if the price swing occurs between 9:45 a.m. and 3:35 p.m. Eastern time. That’s almost the entire trading day. But it leaves out the fi nal 25 minutes before the close — a period that often sees raging price swings, especially in recent weeks as the kind of volatility that marked the 2008 financial crisis returned.
    The idea is for the trading pause to draw attention to an affected stock, establish a reasonable market price and resume trading “in a fair and orderly fashion,” the SEC said.
    On May 6, about 30 stocks listed in the S&P 500 index fell at least 10 percent within five minutes. The drop briefly wiped out $1 trillion in market value as some stocks traded as low as a penny.
    The disruption “illustrated a sudden, but temporary, breakdown in the market’s price-setting function when a number of stocks and (exchange-traded funds) were executed at clearly irrational prices,” SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in a statement. “By establishing a set of circuit breakers that uniformly pauses trading in a given security across all venues, these new rules will ensure that all markets pause simultaneously and provide time for buyers and sellers to trade at rational prices.”

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00603&AppName=1

Where is the guy with the fat finger? Did they find him? They immediately declared that was what it was ('they' being the government controlled media) so they should have been able to 'finger' him by now...no? How surprising...

When the government sets a 'rule' for the stock market, it is clearly NOT a true picture of how the stock market is  REALLY doing. Not allowing trading on certain stocks will present a false sense of security in the market. Just like they did with the housing market. How much longer is the government going to throw money at bad until it all collapses? Just let the damn thing fall and let the younger generation have a chance to rebuild and prosper instead of slapping a life long debt that will hinder them for life.

Still waiting fo r the fat finger guy. That report is as reliable as when the media said the Times Square bomber was an angry white male from the Tea Party who "was against health care." It turned out to be a typically radical, hateful muzzie named Vajazzle Sheetzahd or something like that.

So what else will the gubermint control?

I can't stand it!