What Would it Take to Halt Trading of the Dow Jones Industrials?
October 10th, 2008Via: AP:
As harrowing as the stock market’s plunges have been in recent days, they still haven’t been enough to trigger the “circuit breaker” mechanisms that result in an automatic timeout in trading.
The Big Board implemented the automatic halts after the stock market crashed in the late 1980s to force traders to take a break from frenzied selling.
The Dow Jones industrial average would have to fall 1,100 points in a day to trigger the first halt. If that point is reached before 2 p.m., the market would shut down for an hour. If the threshold is breached between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., the halt will last 30 minutes. No trading stops will take place if the plunge occurs after 2:30 p.m.
Based on Thursday’s Dow close of 8,579, the threshhold number to cause the market stop in ond day would be 7,479.
If the index were to fall 2,200 points before 1 p.m., the market would close for two hours. If such a decline took place between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., there would be a one-hour pause. The market would close for the day if stocks sank to that level after 2 p.m.
In the event of a 3,350-point decline, the market would close for the day, regardless of the time.
The thresholds are computed at the beginning of each quarter to establish a specific point value for the quarter. The 1,100-point drop represented a 10 percent decline at that time; the 2,200 level, a 20 percent drop and the 3,350 level is a 30 percent drop.
The rules would halt trading on the major securities and futures exchanges in a coordinated cross-market halt if the circuit breaker is enacted.
I think, even if everything doesn’t fall apart in the next few days or weeks, what’s happening right now is “it”. Why? Being a Pisces Moon (conjunct my Midheaven, no less) and a Cancer Rising, I do have a smidge of psychic intuition. I have quite a facillity with Tarot cards, Runes, and the I-Ching, and sometimes I find myself thinking about something that a few weeks or even days later turns out to be very relevant to unfolding events.
I’m not “freaking out” about what’s going on. I’ve known this was coming for a long enough time that I resolved I wouldn’t freak out when it all started coming down, so my thought-process is not riddled with unhelpful anxiety. Just the same, for more than a week, I haven’t been able to sleep for more than four hours every night on quite a few nights. I’ll sleep for four hours and then wake up and simply be unable to fall asleep again. This past evening, this happened after only two hours. I think my subconscious mind knows that something very significant and troubling is lurking in the near future, because these disturbed sleep patterns otherwise usually only happen when I’m experiencing very palpable and undeniable conscious-mind anxiety. Work this afternoon is going to suck, as getting only two hours of shut-eye results in the same mental state as when you pull an “all-nighter”.
Oh yeah, and I may have mentioned this here in a recent comment already, but I would also mention once again that very recently, I got a very “collapse-appropriate” reading when I cast the I-Ching.
Last night I sent my older brother the myopic Baby Boomer an e-mail (that I wrote in such a way that took pains to sound calm, rational, and objective) saying that he and I should talk about what we would do in the event of a very severe economic dislocation. In the event of a “Great Depression 2.0” scenario, I would tend to think that we would pack up as much stuff as we could into his car and head probably for good back to the hometown in central Wisconsin of 22,000 where our almost 76-year-old mother still lives, especially if I were to suddenly lose my job at the narcissistic grocery store (which, by the way, is currently being remodelled inside and out; it would be grimly funny if economic catastrophe stopped the remodelling right in the middle of the whole messy endeavor). My brother is currently “between jobs”. I wonder how he’ll react to the idea of having said discussion? I can really see him getting all “Baby no like!”, but I can hope against hope, I suppose.
What really scares the crap out of me is the idea of having to live with Mr. Obsessive-Compulsive-Personality-Disorder-with-Pronounced-Narcissistic-Tendencies here in this small apartment of mine. I think that would be the one thing that could truly drive me to a psychotic state. (I would have to nuke a lot of things on my computer and in my hard-copy notebooks because he loves to snoop, and expecting him not to do so for the sake of decorum and decency would be deeply naive.) But not really having slept last night, I should probably avoid such thoughts in the interest of retaining my rational grip on things. (And once again, apologies for venting like hey-go-mad.)
pookie barging in here, but lawdy, L&L, I can’t imagine I’m the only Crytogoner who thinks you ought to fuggedibout your brother and just head out to your mother’s on your own. If he shows up later on the doorstep, bedraggled and starving, then put him to work digging a “Bombed Boomer Garden,” akin to the WWII Victory Gardens.
@pookie:
It could be I’m just not giving older bro enough credit, because as I’ve said, he’s a lot less obnoxious than he used to be. It’s just that I’m in the psychological habit of “preparing for the worst” with regard to him because if I don’t, I can so easily end up in a situation where I see all my personal dignity and self-respect ripped to bloody shreds. Besides, I was very sleep-deprived yesterday morning Wisconsin-time (which resulted in my sleeping like a rock all last night, thank goodness), and that makes one just a teensy bit anxious and paranoid. 🙂