Might just happen!? - 'DJ10K?
With world stock markets staggering under the impact of a weak Japanese yen, it may not seem
as if the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) will climb much higher. But if it reaches 10,000 -- as
seemed imminent just two months ago -- it could trigger a catastrophe analogous to Y2K -- this
according to research firm The Gartner Group and others.
The glitch, now being referred to as DJ10K, has the potential to crash systems, as many
automated trading operations are programmed to suspend trading if the DJIA falls by a preset
amount, to prevent panic trading. Designed to compute only four-digit averages, many systems
will read the extra digit incorrectly, dropping the first or last digit. That is, if the DJIA closed at
10,673, this figure could be read as either 1,067 or 673. Although the jury is still out on the
ramifications of the DJ10K problem, it is most likely to effect companies basing operations on
older equipment originally programmed in such languages as JCL, Cobol, and PL/1.
"People need to take a proactive approach rather than wait for these IT problems to blindside
them," said Ed Severs, executive VP of Adpac Corp., a San Francisco-based conversion
software company that offers a solution for systems unable to handle the transition to a five-digit
average.
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