Computers To Blame For Sudden Drop, Dow Jones Says
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Dow Jones & Co. said its computers were responsible for the sudden drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average about an hour before the close of trading yesterday because they failed to keep up with stock trades. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. also reported problems.
The Dow average plummeted 178 points in a single minute just before 3 p.m. That’s when New York-based Dow Jones switched to a another data server, which instantly calculated the effect of trades done earlier in the day Dow Jones spokeswoman Sybille Reitz said.
“The extraordinary heavy trading volume caused a delay in our Dow Jones Industrial Average data,” Ms. Reitz said. “As we identified the problem we switched over to a backup system and the result was a rapid catch up in the public value for the Dow.”
