May 6, 2010 was the most volatile day in the marketplace in 2010. Here is a series of pictures:
Capital was rushing into the US dollar, US treasury securities and Gold – three major pillars of stability.
Neutral were energy commodities.
I got caught right in the maelstrom — I was watching the quotes and humming along, and then suddenly P&G, which I held a small amount of, went absolutely haywire. I got out ASAP, losing a significant amount of paper gains, only to discover the mess with the exchanges. I’m really hoping my trade qualifies to be busted, as I believe it should. When the quotes were ranging from 25% down to 9% down to 21% down in the span of a second or two, there’s something really wrong. In retrospect, I’m not sure what the proper action was, but I’ve seen that kind of messy action happening in markets that are really going to fall so it’s a bit of a coin flip on what the right response is.
At least you weren’t the guy selling Accenture at 1 penny.
I doubt the NYSE will be busting up any trades despite the fact that all of this computer program trading is causing the volatility when they are all synchronized to go in the same direction.
Actually, they’ve been sending out notices that they’re going to be busting a bunch of trades after the volatility started, so it’s possible. It definitely applies to the Accenture trade.
Looks like if your trade went 60% below market then it will be busted. Man, I wonder who had limit buys at 50% below market that day, they must have made a fortune off of whatever institution was program selling.