A computer glitch triggered a sudden plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average at mid-afternoon Tuesday, turning an already bad day in stocks into a head-turning spectacle.
Dow Jones & Co, the media company that manages the well-known index of 30 blue chip stocks, said it discovered shortly before 14:00 that its computers were not properly handling the day's huge volume in trades at the New York Stock Exchange.
It switched to a backup computer, and the result was a massive swoon in the index as the secondary system took over processing shortly before 15:00.
The Dow plunged about 200 points almost instantly, and was down as much as 546 points - its worst single-session decline in more than five years, and one that sent the blue chips into negative territory for the year.
Read more at FIN24.co.za
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment