ON THE MONITOR
Warning: Destruction Could Be Only Goal of Next Market Convulsion
May 9, 2010
If you think a 1,000-point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a big deal, just look at that number in a different light. The amount of wealth that was wiped away in less than a day was $1 trillion, according to a former director of the National Security Agency. And that one-time head of our most powerful code-breaking spooks says it could have been a lot worse.
Speaking at the 2010 Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Operations Conference Friday, Michael McConnell said he saw no indication that the instructional error that may have set off Thursday’s historic plunge in the index was the result of what another security expert at the conference would refer to as “hostile digits.”
But McConnell, now a senior vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton, said it was only a matter of time before a “catastrophic event” employing digits from parties who wished to leave no fingerprings would hit the U.S. financial system – and by extension, the rest of the world. If, of course, the federal government and private industry do not take serious, coordinated action while there still is time.
THE WEEK AHEAD:
MONDAY, MAY 10
EARNINGS CALL: Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR)
8:30 a.m. Estimate: 21 cents
TUESDAY, MAY 11
WEBCAST: TARP Oversight: An Update on Warrant Repurchases
11 a.m., House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
WEBCAST: The Stock Market Plunge: What Happened and What Is Next?
3 p.m., House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12
EVENT: Re-engineering the Process and Technology for Collateral Management
7:30 a.m., Capital Markets Consortium, Bayards, New York
EVENT: Data Foundations and Business Intelligence
8 a.m., Wall Street Technology Association, Westin New York at Times Square
THURSDAY, MAY 13
EVENT: Global Tax Withholding & Reclamation
7:30 a.m., Capital Markets Consortium, Bayards, New York
THE WEEK THAT WAS:
Anatomy of a Plunge: Geyser of Orders Put NYSE in 'Slow Mode'
RiskMetrics Feels the Risk of Being Acquired, in its Earnings
SIFMA OPS 2010: SEC, FINRA, SIFMA Plan Program to License Operations Executives
NYSE Euronext Opens European Liquidity Data Center
NYSE Imposes First “Hard Close” Penalty—On Goldman
CME Group to use Xignite for OTC Market Data Distribution
Exchanges Point Fingers Over Human Hands
Congress Takes Aim at Wall St.’s Wild Trading
High-Frequency Traders Lose Their Luster
