Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks would stop trading for an hour should the Dow Jones Industrial Average decline 1,100 points to 7,591.25, based on “circuit breakers” imposed by the New York Stock Exchange.

December futures on the Dow average were barred from falling further at about 4:30 a.m. today after a drop of more than 6 percent triggered limits on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Once regular trading begins at 9:30 a.m., a one-hour halt will be imposed should the Dow fall 12.66 percent from yesterday’s close.

The circuit-breaker rules, which call for a 30-minute halt should the Dow decline 1,100 points in the 30 minutes after 2 p.m., expire at 2:30 p.m. They would bar trading for two hours if the Dow lost 2,200 points.

“People are scared to death,” said Ted Weisberg, president of Seaport Securities in New York, at the NYSE. “I didn’t sign up for this. Confidence and transparency are missing.”

Equities tumbled globally today on concern the worldwide economic slump with crimp earnings. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index sank 7.5 percent and the pound slid the most versus the dollar since 1971 after the economy shrank for the first time since 1992. South Korea’s Kospi Index slumped 10 percent.

S&P 500 futures expiring in December fell 60 points, or 6.6 percent, to 855.20 as of 9:11 a.m. in New York. The SPDR Trust Series 1, an exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500, slumped 8.9 percent to $83.54. Dow futures dropped 550, or 6.3 percent, to 8,224, while Nasdaq-100 Index futures lost 6.8 percent.

S&P 500 futures won’t trade below 855.2 until U.S. exchanges open, said Jeremy Hughes, a London-based spokesman for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Dow Average futures won’t trade below 8,224. The “limit down” suspension allows both contracts to trade above those levels, he said.

“We really haven’t had a limit move yet where we stay limited to the open,” said Frank Lesh, a trader at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. “We may try for the 10 percent limit during the day.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 24, 2008 09:13 EDT