Wall Street halts futures trading amid panic

[keep_it_real]

Before Wall Street opened yesterday, American regulators suspended all trading of Dow Jones futures contracts, which had plunged. Such contracts allow traders to bet on the future direction of the Dow Jones index. The plunge had triggered an automatic circuit breaker, which halts trading to prevent a market sliding into freefall.

Yesterday, investors became gripped with fear as they realised that recent attempts by central bankers to bail out financial institutions and cut interest rates would not prevent a severe global recession.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5010556.ece

[tekisui]

1. Damn, again, this is two straight after hours trading sessions halted.

[PDJane]

2. You can't prevent the weight of a top-down recession

By feeding money in at the top. It's insane, and it simply can't work.

[grasswire]

3. not reported in U.S., apparently

I didn't see anything about it.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. This was Friday morning, before the open.

Dow futures were "Limit Down" by 8:00 AM ET meaning they had reached a mark (550 pts) that forced suspension of further trading of Futures contracts before the opening bell on Friday. When 9:30 came along, the market opened, fell about 400 and change or so and came back up. Finished for the day down just over 312.

In other words, it's old news.