CURRENT WALL STREET "YEAR 2000" TEST
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I've put excerpts from several articles together which relate to this test
Wall Street to Turn Clock Ahead to See if Year 2000 Computes
Message 5172262
NEW YORK (July 12 NY Times) -- For computer wizards on Wall Street, Monday of this week will be Dec. 29, 1999, a step into electronic time travel that will be studied anxiously around the globe.
After months of preparation, the United States' leading brokers, major exchanges, clearinghouses and depository companies will begin mock trading in the widest-ranging test yet by any industry of how well computers will cope with the transition to the next century.
Over the next two weeks, the industry will reset the clocks on the test computers and investigate what might happen to anyone trading stocks, options or corporate and municipal bonds on Dec. 30 and 31, 1999, and Jan. 3 and 4, 2000 ...
Those managing the securities tests are discouraging any attempt to draw broad conclusions from them. The managers point out, for example, that the tests will deal with very small volumes of fictional securities, and they describe the exercise as a mere dress rehearsal for high-volume tests planned for next spring. Some major computer systems have been completely excluded, including those that manage dividends and interest, margin trading and client account records.
In addition, only the most common types of trades and securities will be tested this week, although separate tests have been scheduled for government bonds and a limited test has already been run on mortgage-backed securities.
"Dealing with this isn't rocket science, but there is a mountain of details," said Donald Kittell, the association's executive vice president. "People don't realize that a trade may go through 40 to 50 steps from start to finish."
The securities companies participating in the test that starts Sunday account for about half the trading volume in stocks, bonds, options and other major financial instruments. Each agreed to set up a discrete computer operation to run the tests. In the United States alone, securities companies are expected to spend $3 billion to $5 billion addressing year 2000 and related computer problems.
Yet, when the millennium actually arrives, Wall Street's ability to function will depend not just on the internal systems it began to test today but on the preparedness of markets overseas, where many players offset any bets placed domestically.
What is more, Wall Street's success at ushering in the millennium will also depend heavily on the year 2000 readiness of New York City's power, water and telecommunications utilities, of the elevators leading to the trading rooms and of countless other systems that are beyond its ability to test.
All of this underscores what many computer experts consider one of the most troubling aspects of the year 2000 challenge. Each phase of the millennium problem -- from identifying vulnerable systems to figuring out remedies to testing fixes -- has proved more complicated, time-consuming and expensive than had been expected. The emerging consensus has been that testing has been the most widely underestimated challenge.
"And even the best testing programs can only check through a fraction of the scenarios that computers will encounter in daily operations in the new century.
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EXCLUDING TRADING VOLUME TESTING
biz.yahoo.com
"... some were concerned over the decision to exclude trading volume in testing that began today (July 13) of Wall Street' computer readiness for the year 2000."
"Failing to test for volume when running simulated trades could fail to indicate how efficiently brokerage firm's software systems will function in the Year 2000, particularly in the event of trading days with high trading volumes."
"In an April 8 speech given to bankers in Basel, Switzerland, Kittell said the systems that underwent the beta test could fail in a high-volume trading environment."
"Kittell acknowledged it was 'well understood' that fixing the Year 2000 problem eats up capacity, which could slow down its ability to process trades. But he said the SIA and its members had to prioritize on what it would test for, and that volume was seen as an issue that the firms could handle separately."
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OPTIONS CLEARING CORP: EMBEDDED SYSTEM LAND MINES
zdnet.com
Having invested more than a decade of time in remediation efforts to counteract the millennium bug, Len Neuzil is one of the few IT executives who should feel confident that all systems are go for the year 2000.
But he's not, mostly because there are so many things that are out of his control: specifically, the embedded chips ... that reside within mainframes, servers, power grids and telephone circuit switches, to name a few. These embedded microprocessors, Neuzil would argue, are the real ticking time bombs, not the software programs.
... OCC has about 150 customers in the form of clearing member companies and stockbrokers that rely on the company's ability to conduct daily trades. OCC is a clearinghouse for the American Stock Exchange, the Pacific Stock Exchange, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board Option Exchange. One day down would be a $30 billion liability for OCC, Neuzil says.
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Y2K BATTLE PLAN: ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS & BILL WEXLER
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Army Corps of Engineers' Huntsville Center Designs Y2K Battle Plan ...
year2000.com
Tahir Rizvi, program manager for the Operations Maintenance Engineering Enhancement Program highlights ten Y2K myths that can foil facility managers' plans to successfully address the Year 2000 compliance issues.
Y2K MYTHS:
- Only computers are affected.
- We do not have to test the equipment if the vendors say it is compliant.
- If we test the components individually, we do not have to test the system.
- We don't need to contact the vendors. We can test it ourselves by changing the date.
- We have until Dec. 31, 1999 to complete the Y2K work.
- It will be all over on Jan. 1, 2000.
- If we check the equipment on one floor, we don't need to check other similar floors.
- All our new construction projects will be Y2K compliant.
- The vendor's service agreement covers Y2K compliance.
- The vendors have liability should a system fail.
NOW ... BILL WEXLER'S BATTLE PLAN: "SHORT Y2K STOCKS"
Highlights from Bill Wexler's: THE Y2K HOAX
Subject 15277
"Now the computer industry has to deal with its own big, ugly hoax - it's called "the year 2000 problem". Exactly when and how this load of hooey started careening down the information-superhighway is not clear..."
"Unfortunately, the scientific evidence does not back up claims of the true believers, but like any religious zealot, they're not interested in gathering empirical evidence to support their hypotheses."
"As with any scam, science and reason have been left in a Dumpster. In much the same way that con artists who deal in quack-medicine, perpetual-motion machines, and miracle diet pills use "science-speak" to paint a fa‡ade of credibility and mislead their victims - the Y2K crooks use their own impressive-sounding pseudoscientific lexicon: "find, fix, test", "manual vs. automated conversion", "millions of lines of code per second" and various other phrases which may sound like real computer science to the layman but are actually meaningless gibberish."
"Millennial apocalypse hoaxes and panics are nothing new. This one just happens to be a particularly embarrassing."
FINAL THOUGHTS FROM BILL WEXLER ...
Message 5184096
The Y2K crisis has been embraced by ultra right-wing Chrisitian lunatics from the outset. I have stated many times in the past that the Y2K computer hoax fits in perfectly with millenial apocalypse superstition.
CBN is run by the loathsome Pat Robertson. Pat is well known for making predicitons about the dates of Armageddon and Christ's second coming..dates which seem to come and go and, gosh darn, Jesus is late again!! When Pat is not busy begging for money from little old ladies to fund his bizarre and scary political activities, he claims to "heal" people right over the TV. Now he is pushing the Y2K hoax.
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