STORY: NYSE Dims the Lights to Attract Trading
Whether they fix it or not, the damage has been done: The firm’s stock closed Thursday down 62 percent. Bloomberg News reported that Knight had hired Goldman Sachs (GS) and Sandler O’Neill & Partners to advise it as potential buyers begin expressing interest. Although Knight, headquartered in Jersey City, N.J., may never fully explain exactly what happened, here’s a breakdown of what is known:
Between 9:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. EDT, one of Knight’s trading algorithms reportedly started pushing erratic trades through on nearly 150 different stocks, from Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) to Nokia (NOK) to Exelon (EXC). Trading volumes soared in many of them, so much so that the most traded stock on a typical day, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), finished the Aug. 1 session as the 52nd-most traded stock, according to Eric Hunsader, CEO of market data service Nanex.