Are Stock Market Circuit Breakers Going To Stop Another Flash Crash?
To avoid another Flash Crash, new circuit breakers for the stock market were suggested by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. The new trading curbs would be applied at first as a trial run to all stocks on the Standard and Poor’s Index. The SEC said the new stock market circuit breakers will pause trading in specific stocks if their prices move by 10 percent or more in five minutes. The trial will begin after a 10-day comment period and will last through Dec. 10. The proposal is a response to the market slide on May 6 that drove the Dow Jones industrial average down about 700 points within minutes.
Resource for this article: Will stock market circuit breakers stop another Flash Crash
Volatile stocks the focus of NYSE circuit breakers
NYSE circuit breakers already in place did not trip during the May 6 Flash Crash, but those trading curbs are market-based — they don’t apply at the individual stock level. Reuters reports that regulators and the exchanges have been under intense pressure to figure out what triggered the May 6 meltdown and do something to repair the integrity of U.S. stock markets. The exact cause of the Flash Crash has yet to be determined, but a mechanism to briefly halt trading across markets for a single stock apparently is the solution. A European news service called Reuters adds that the new NYSE circuit breakers are similar to stricter methods used in European markets. Circuit breakers at the London Stock Exchange are based on the liquidity and volatility of individual stocks.
Stub quotes exposed by Flash Crash
The stock market Flash Crash on May 6 brought the market down nearly 1,000 points in a matter of hours. Traders could have looked for cheap payday loans, and the Dow soon rebounded, but it finished the day down 347.80, or 3.2 percent, at 10,520.32. According to the New York Times, some individual stocks suffered quite a bit more than the market at large. For a penny or less per share, five exchange traded funds, mutual funds that trade like stocks, were traded for. There were also nine more trading at 15 cents or less per stock. Stocks traded hands for a penny a share because of what the SEC calls “stub quotes,” or placeholder bids that traders sometimes enter into the electronic system when they don’t really want to buy or sell a stock, but want to stay in the game.
New NYSE circuit breakers more equitable
Thousands of trades in hundreds of stocks were canceled as a result of having been judged as “clearly erroneous,” executed by computer before traders were able to react to what was happening in the market. Market regulators canceled any trades that took place between 2:40 and 3 p.m. that were 60 percent or more below the last trade that took place before 2:40 pm. In the same article, Reuters explains that some investors think that the circuit breaker on individual stocks is a more equitable approach to prevent drastic, across-the-board trade cancellations.
“The broad market circuit breakers affect everybody, and could penalize people for what could be an index move,” Lou Matrone, a sales trader at JonesTrading, told Reuters. “But the stock-based ones deal with it specifically on a case by case basis. You’re not penalizing people for trading stocks where nothing is really going on, they’re not being dragged in for a ‘fat finger’ problem or some other problem.”
The SEC also considers other trading curbs
During the six-month circuit breaker trial period, the New York Times reports that the SEC will also consider other trading curbs discussed during a recent Congressional inquiry into the May 6 plunge. Those included ways to address the risks of market orders, a ban on so-called stub quotes of one or a few cents for a stock that is trading at a higher price, and the use of trading pauses at various exchange.
Read more on this topic here
10-day comment period
http://sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-80.htm
Reuters reports
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1817385520100518
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/business/19crash.html?partner=rss&emc=rss