Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Where did the U.S. stock market actually close yesterday? It’s pretty much an open question. To give you an idea of just how bad the so-called “glitch” was yesterday, Bill Griffeth, the co-anchor of the CNBC show, the Nightly Business Report, had to deliver this warning to his viewers before reporting the prices of the closing stock market indexes yesterday.
“By the way, toward the close, there was a technical issue with trading computers. It’s not clear if all of the volume was reported or if some of the prices of the indexes were affected. You might see different numbers elsewhere but these were the numbers we had of the close today.” (See video below of the program.)
Griffeth’s quaint phrase “technical issue with trading computers,” is not accurate. It was not a problem with trading computers but rather the failure of the Consolidated Tape System to receive executed trade reports from the various stock exchanges that must timely report their trades to the Consolidated Tape.
The Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) began reporting technical problems at 3:15 p.m. At 3:19 p.m. the CTA reported that it was switching its system to its Disaster Recovery Site/Secondary Data Center. The problems lasted into the evening.
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