To: Stephen Smith who wrote (91 ) 7/26/1998 6:50:00 PM From: Wizzer Respond to of 151
Stephen, thanks for your input. What would be the scenario with a stock market computer that has date sensitive buy and sell trades? Would it simply not be executed? Here is an example: I execute a trade to be completed Dec 31, 1999. It takes 3 days for settling an account. My broker receives that information, either by telephone or through my Web Account, and inputs the trade details into their computer. When Jan 1, 2000 rolls around does the computer recognize that the date is in error and just think that it is bad data and return an error message when the info. is processed, or does it absolutely ignore that trade because it happened 100 years ago? Does the computer think that I owe them principle and interest for a 100 year outstanding debt and automatically closes my account? Also, what would be the effect on a trading computer that, to the best of "it's" knowledge has thousands of error messages simultaneously? If there was a serious problem with computers not accepting trade orders, the stock exchanges move to manual execution of trades, and current stock market information is not available, I see thousands of clients calling their brokers and executing "SELL AT MARKET" orders. This incidentally, is why I believe when there is a serious market drop, thousands of "SELL AT MARKET" and/or "STOP LOSS ORDERS" are executed and cause the stock exchanges to drop hundreds of points in a short period of time. The amount of the orders causing downward pressure on the indexes, will dictate how quickly all computer trading is halted. Computer trading compounds this problem, but it would exist with manual trades also. Halting computer trading merely "plugs the hole in the dyke" temporarily. The "panic" I spoke of in my previous post, leads investors to put in "AT MARKET" orders and causes a downturn in the market to become a several hundred point loss. That is what I fear most of all, thousands of "AT MARKET" orders flooding in, and causing a small panic, to become anarchy. We have seen it before, to some extent, but I believe this effect may be exaggerated at the millenium. Sorry my thoughts might sound all over the place, but this is at least, my simplified version of what I feel is possible. I certainly hope some resolution is found to this problem, and I hope these "worst case scenarios" we are talking about, do not occur. I would appreciate your thoughts.