To its credit, the SEC (SEC news) moved quickly to address the stunning market meltdown last Thursday, calling executives of top exchanges to Washington, where they agreed, in principle, to a new "structural framework to be refined over the next few days." We still do not know exactly what triggered the stunning market drop.

Theories abound. It may have been a perfect-storm-like confluence of events. But many agree that the lack of a market-wide circuit breaker may have exacerbated a sell-off, allowing it all to cascade. The AP notes that one possible remedy is for exchanges to simultaneously slow trading of a specific stock if its price moves too quickly. This might be based on a "rate of percentage change in the value of a stock or its trading volume." I doubt this will spell the end of the episode.

The event has touched on other issues, like naked access and high-frequency trading (high-frequency trading news), issues that regulators were already grappling with. We'll also see more calls to consolidate data for risk management purposes. We regularly discuss these issues over on FierceFinanceIT. 

For more:
- here's the AP article

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