Dow suffered 11 min. delay amid Thursday sell-off
Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:56PM EDT
(Reuters) - During Thursday's sharp stock sell-off, with volume soaring to a record, the system that calculates the value of the Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI: Quote, Profile, Research) suffered an 11 minute delay.
"We experienced a slight system latency between 2:57 and 3:08 p.m," Sybille Reitz, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones Indexes, said on Friday. During that time, the published values of the Dow differed by 17 to 25 points from the prices of the 30 underlying securities, she said.
The delay happened on a day when the Dow industrials tumbled as much as 400 points, and trading volume for New York Stock Exchange-listed shares traded in all markets hit an unofficial record, reaching 5.9 billion.
Giri Cherukuri, head trader at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois, said, "It happens now and then when you have very heavy volume like you did yesterday, and it makes you stop sometimes to make sure you are getting accurate information."
The lag was much shorter than the 70 minute delay seen on Feb. 27 --when a computer malfunction contributed to an abrupt 200 point slide in the blue-chip index. |
