The New York Stock Exchange did not trade between the hours of 11:32 a.m. and 3:10 p.m. yesterday (July 8) due to a technical glitch. This is raising new worries about the soundness of our financial markets.
Market analysts have said that the SEC, which polices the markets, has struggled to keep up with the changes in technology that have come to dominate modern trading. The SEC has also missed out on opportunities to address key vulnerabilities, opening the door to other damaging threats.
"This kind of stuff is inevitable," said Harvey Pitt, a Securities and Exchange Commission chairman from 2001 to 2003 who helped oversee the market's response to the 9/11 attacks. "But if its inevitable, that means you can plan for it," he said.
The SEC has been widely criticized after the 2010 "flash crash" when the markets plummeted more than 1,000 points in just a few minutes. After that crash, it took SEC officials nearly four months to unwind that day's orders and issue a report on what went wrong.