[HIB]No Easy Tech Explanation for What Caused Wall St. 'Flash Crash

On May 6, the Dow Jones Industrial average was puttering along, trading in a range between 10,600 and 10,800 for most of the day. Then, suddenly around 2:30 pm, the index suddenly dropped 1,000 points in just a few minutes. Panic dulled, and the index perked right back up. But for a few minutes there, half a trillion dollars worth of value had been erased. The incident became known as "the flash crash.". Regulators, investors, and the public all asked the same question, "WTF?!?" How could our vaunted markets be so brittle? Did anyone know what the hell was going on? All kinds of hypotheses were floated. Hackers! A buggy automated trading program! Something more sinister! No one knew quite what happened, but it was clear that computers trading stocks had something to do with it. Several government bodies started investigations, including a joint effort between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Of course, everyone was looking for a scapegoat, someone or something to blame. But the latter organization also took steps to address the deeper problems of our markets increasingly being driven by algorithmic, computerized trading.

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