Wall Street's worst stock plunge in three years unfolded in a relatively orderly manner, as market safeguards put in place after last year's "flash crash" appeared to have done their job, according to the Wall St Journal.
Despite significant glitches hitting European markets and a few minor headaches in the U.S., participants gave high marks to the complex electronic-trading network that suffered a meltdown in May 2010.
"The markets were very similar from a macroeconomic standpoint as they were on May 6 of last year, and obviously things performed much better," said Joseph Cangemi, managing director of electronic trading for Convergex Inc. "We could have had a situation at any one time where capitulation could have happened, but the market structure itself did not allow it to breach any critical levels."
Trading on Thursday was the U.S. stock market's busiest day since late May 2010, with 13.9 billion shares changing hands as investors fled from stocks. An average day this year has seen 7.5 billion shares traded, holding well below the prior-year average of 8.5 billion.
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Problems in Europe were more severe, where derivatives markets run by NYSE Euronext reported a 90-minute trading engine outage that forced a delayed open for interest-rate and stock-index contracts, while driving erroneous calculations of equity indexes compiled by the exchange group.
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Just the tip of the iceberg. Find out the rest at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903366504576490153715577200.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
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