Pulling chips off the table may be a good move at the moment, Steve, if the dire prediction I just read has any validity. The fact that the "experts" on Wall Street discredit the possibility of a DJ10K problem lends some sense of credibility. Let's see what you think...
Bruce
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Y2K-Like Problem Predicted As Dow Storms To 10,000
Software developers say they have found the cloud in the wide silver lining of Wall Street's bull market- a numerical glitch similar to the Year 2000 problem.
Programmers in the stock and securities industries, having never anticipated the meteoric rise of the Dow Jones industrial average, have written some applications in a fashion that support only four digits, experts said. If the Dow hits 10,000- and it was hovering at around 9,200 last week- certain automated trading operations might not
work properly, they said.
"Trading organizations face massive exposure if the [Dow] passes 10,000 and their systems interpret it as 1,000 or 0,000," said analyst Andy Kyte in a Gartner Group report. "Computer-based trading systems could interpret the 10,000 event as a catastrophic crash."
Many automated trading applications are programmed to shut down if the Dow falls by a preset amount, experts said.
But IT managers in the securities industry earlier this week uniformly rejected the notion that the so-called "DJ10K" problem will have a significant impact on stock trading. One member of the Securities Industries Association's technology management committee, which met last week, said that a five-digit Dow "will not be a problem" for Wall Street applications. By Tim Wilson
pubs.cmpnet.com
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