Trying to understand what causes flash crashes is no longer just for financial regulators and Wall Street. It’s a big deal in Silicon Valley too.
Since billions of dollars were quickly erased from U.S. stocks in May 2010, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been trying to create a massive repository that would track stock and options trading from exchanges and broker-dealers on a daily basis. That way regulators could quickly go back and find clues to what caused a market interruption. The lack of progress was highlighted last August when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,100 points in the first few minutes of trading, sending regulators scrambling once again to figure out what went wrong.