I'd like to thank my editor Erin Joyce for suggesting this piece. It was a lot of fun to do the research and write it up ... and I daresay I haven't seen too many other people out there trying to summarize what may have gone wrong on that fateful day in May.
Experienced investors, particularly those who have worked for a while on Wall Street, like to believe that they have seen it all and try to project an air of slightly dismissive boredom with the day-to-day gyrations in the markets. On May 6, though, hundreds of would-be masters of the universe were in utter panic as the markets melted down in spectacular fashion.
In what is now being called the "flash crash", the Dow lost over 700 points in a matter of minutes, at one point being down nearly 1,000 points for the day, before storming back. In the wake of that craziness, exchanges and investors had to sift through broken trades and regulators are still trying to figure out what happened.
For the full column, please continue on to:
http://financialedge.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0610/What-Caused-The-Flash-Crash.aspx
