The MERC is a tough place to get anything done: Their management on the systems side has had some challenges: some people have been replaced. One thing that I would say about the MERC - I dont know if its still true today - is that while I was there the culture of the exchange organization was not as cut throat as many other large companies: That is, it was deemed important to collaboratively solve problems. One of the issues with getting things done at the MERC in the past was that many important decisions needed direct or indirect approval by member committees or individual members. This made implementing important time-critical solutions more difficult than they needed to be..... My sense of things today at the MERC is that many of these types of issues have been greatly improved.
LOL Remember that prick high schooler who shorted ELX (EMLX at the time) and put out a phony story on the wires, and Bloomberg picked it up? The stock dropped 40 points or something that day. What ever happened to that punk?
how can this crash globex servers without making the punk lose a lot of money? i can imagine someone placing just 1 lot limit buys way below the bid (or limt sells above the ask) then canceling immediately, repeat and repeat... like a denial of service attack... but simultaneous bid and offers? isn't that expensive (in commissions) and losses because of partial fills? Also didn't the broker noticed the guy was overloading their servers?
Sounds peculiar How's he entering those orders directly into Globex. He'd have to have an active approved link to the Globex front end - not something you'd get dialing in from home through AOL. If it was through a broker, why would the broker computer allow him to process 10,000 contract orders?
there are reports which suggest the hacker story is not true. I don't know what is real or not. I should mention that it takes usually some time to trace a hacker. And to do this, the hack should be pretty skilled. So being caught so easily is suspicious. please can anyone confirm or not the story, with source mentioned, links so that we can judge for ourselves.
sources again do suggest this hacker story is a hoax. for known, past, exchange wide outage (NYSE and NASDAQ), one was attributed to a human error (running a diagnostic software at the very very wrong time - MCI for Nasdaq) and software glitches when upgrading to another version (NYSE). So it is very possible that the same happened here. The romantic version with the hacker.. well.. just that, romantic.
It does make you pause and wonder -- one really good hacker getting through the system and somehow being able to post 100,000 contracts at ask -- it could echo outward causing a worldwide economic panic. I wouldn't be surprised if Al Queda has been looking into something like this. All you would need to do is bypass the numerous safeguards in place, get to the heart of the system and have globex transmit false information about market data. Hopefully they have their system locked down very securely -- but all it takes is one tiny bug somewhere to exploit a security breach and WAM -- See ya S&P!
40? Try like 80! Next to the suprise rate cut in Jan 2000 that was the craziest action I have ever seen Gotta love it!
yep ! I do remember vividly this rate cut... it scared the crap out of me! That's the kind of thing I always try to keep in mind while trading or helping with some software. Disasters do happen and they can kill you. It takes just a few seconds. you can't prevent it. you can't predict it. you can only (barely) manage it. about the fake orders. it happened in the past already. usually human error not criminal activity. they can recognize it pretty quickly and freeze operations. Actually in Europe, such a wrong order, which triggered catastrophic automatic selling and stop blowing, was actually reversed. All executions rendered 'void' (even those with big big gains). This is possible since the exchange can bust trades. (there was a trap though, some orders were not cancelled, I think. but I am not totally sure.. please correct me if someone remembers). I can imagine the same would happen in chicago. I don't pretend to know all the rules, so maybe I am wrong. But many at the exchange would lobby to save their rear end of a wrongful manipulation. tntneo